


we were born to break the doors down

by naheka



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Age Swap, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Batfamily Feels, Female Dick Grayson, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Genderbending, Light Angst, Minor Dick Grayson/Roy Harper, Minor Dick Grayson/Wally West, Minor Roy Harper/Jason Todd, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 14:21:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 54,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17582519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naheka/pseuds/naheka
Summary: In a softer universe, Jason Todd is Bruce's oldest son, and the Joker doesn't kill him when he's fifteen.Having Dickie Grayson as a little sister might.





	1. Jason

**Author's Note:**

> I do not have a beta and I'm sure I missed typos and grammar/spelling/pronoun slippage stuff. My apologies.

“This is bullshit, B,” Jason complains, aged sixteen. “I wanted a dog.”

“Language,” Bruce chides absently, setting a small old fashioned suitcase against the foot of the stairs; it’s held together with brightly colored twine and fraying tape. He frowns. “Don’t call your new sister a dog.”

“You can’t just _make_ her my sister.”

“Of course I can’t,” Bruce says blandly. “My lawyer did it.”

Jason glares. His fists clench up by his sides. “They always said I’d get too old for you,” he says, low and vicious. Bruce’s breath catches; his expression goes tight. “They always--”

“Who,” Bruce demands. “ _Who_ said that to you, Jason--”

“Seriously? That’s what you’re choosing to address?” Jason rolls his eyes. Trust Bruce to take the wind out of his sails through pure paternal incompetence. “I don’t care what idiots whisper behind their stupid elbow gloves, Bruce. This is about you and me. I thought we were _partners_.”

“It happened at the opera,” Bruce infers, eyes narrowing.

Jason throws his hands into the air. “You’re impossible. I can’t believe I let you out by yourself--”

“ _Let_ me?”

“--for one date at a circus, and what do you do? Take home one of the freaks--”

“Jason,” Bruce snaps.

Jason winces. “Okay, yeah, I’m an asshole.” He kicks a scuff into the floor with his sneakers, under the carpet where Alfred won’t see it right away. “You could have texted me,” he mutters.

Bruce’s hand lands carefully on his shoulder, then squeezes gently when Jason doesn’t reject the touch. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Jason’s breath catches. Bruce’s apologies, not as rare as his praise but almost as few and far between as his admittances of affection. “Okay,” he mutters, trying to hide the thickness in his voice. “But I don’t have to like her.”

“A pity,” Bruce says, removing the reassuring warmth of his hand and rolling his shoulders in a vague Brucie shrug. “I think you’d be an excellent big brother.”

Unexpected warmth blooms in Jason’s chest. He stamps it down ruthlessly. “Yeah, because fifteen year old teenage boys and twelve year old girls are natural allies.”

“Richelle is smart,” Bruce says. Behind his shoulder and up towards the ceiling, movement flickers in the corner of Jason’s eye. “She speaks several languages, she’s athletic, she’s--”

“In the chandelier,” Jason interrupts.

Bruce blinks. 

Jason points. “She’s in the chandelier.”

Bruce whips around, paling slightly. A dark haired slip of a girl hangs upside down from the gleaming bronze montroisity, peering down at them. She must have jumped from the upper floor, Jason thinks, off the bannister. Even so, it’s quite the leap. “Stay here,” Bruce orders, and takes the stairs three at a time. “Richelle,” he says, voice carefully controlled, pitched low and soothing as he edges towards her. “I’m going to lean out over the railing. Take my hand.”

The girl tilts her head at him. “No.” Slowly, she extends one leg, straight out from her hip. She’s anchored to the base of the chandelier only by the hook of one knee. Jason adjusts his position under her, because there’s no way this doesn’t end with someone plummeting to the ground on top of him. He hopes it turns out to be the girl and not Bruce. Bruce would crush him.

“--this instant,” Bruce is demanding. He’s using his Batman voice, which settles Jason into his stance, settles his nerves. No one defies the Batman voice. 

“You got my name wrong!” The girl sticks her tongue out, and then wobbles. Jason makes a choked noise of panic, extending his arms, but she’s not falling, she’s _swinging_. The leg hanging down rises and falls, increasing her momentum. “You don’t even speak--” she says something, quick and fast and in a language Jason doesn’t understand, peppered with accented English his ears can’t quite pick up. “Gadjo,” she says dismissively, and Jason realizes that the grin on her face isn’t mischief incarnate, it’s rage and fury and grief. 

“I didn’t,” he says suddenly. The girl peers down at him. “I didn’t get your name wrong, right?”

“No.” Her smiles goes genuine for a split second, sly and giggly, before slashing down into that angry smirk again. “You just called me a circus freak.”

Jason winces. “I’m Jason.”

“I heard.”

“I have a motorcycle.”

Her mouth drops open. “No way.”

“Way,” Jason says, holding her attention while Bruce slowly and silently climbs up onto the railing. “I built it.”

She gasps, then tries to play it cool. “That’s… okay, I guess.” She fidgets, the shadows skewing on the walls as her shifting weight moves the light. “... can I see?”

Jason frowns. “I can’t drive her in here, Alfred would kill me. And then her.”

“Her?” 

“Yeah, her. All bikes worth anything are girls.”

The girl hooks her free leg back onto the chandelier and pulls herself upright using only her core. Twelve year olds shouldn’t be able to move like that, Jason thinks, but he pushes it aside. There’s a little bit of bounce in her hair, cut shoulder short, more wave than curl. She’s got skin three shades darker than his and Bruce’s and big blue eyes that are softening from chips of ice to curious little monkey, as she clambers up into a different position and not noticing the mini heart attack Bruce is having just behind her. “How come?”

Jason shrugs. “Cos girls are better than boys, I guess.”

She giggles, her grin gone crooked. “Yeah they are.”

“If you wanna see ‘er, you’re gonna hafta gittdown from there,” Jason says, letting his natural accent come through. It’s a gamble that pays off, because she visibly brightens. 

“You’re not from here.”

“From Bristol?” Jason grins like a shark. “Nah,” he drawls. “Not fuckin’ likely.”

 _Language_ Bruce mouthes, crouching low to prepare for a jump.

Jason makes a sharp motion with his left hand, disguised as a snap. There’s no way the chandelier could take the weight of Bruce’s bulk. “Whaddya say, carnie? Come down and we can go see Ursula right now.”

“Ursula is a good name,” the girl says, tilting her head consideringly. “Okay.” Then she throws herself into the air.

Jason shrieks--listen, a little kid just threw herself to her death because Jason couldn’t talk her down enough--but it’s lost in Bruce’s shout, his fingers slipping against the edge of her shirt as she plummets from his reach. Jason flings himself forward into a dive, his heart thundering, and the girl twirls in the air, a double somersault, before landing with a light thump into Jason’s arms. He crashes forward with the momentum and added weight, turning to take the brunt of the fall on his shoulder and curling around her the best he can. 

Landing hurts. Jason cries out, clutching at the girl in his arms; dimly he hears Bruce call his name. He stirs, fumbling, and sits up, his ribs groaning in protest at the movement. Worried blue eyes fill his vision. “Think fast?”

He groans again. “You’re supposed to say that before you jump.”

The girl pats his face. “But it’s more fun this way.”

Bruce arrives, lifting the girl away and hauling Jason to his feet by his collar. He slides a hand down Jason’s chest, checking for injuries; Jason refuses to wince. The girl dangles from Bruce’s other hand, kicking her feet in the air idly. “I’m Dick,” she says cheerfully. “Can we go see Ursula now? You promised.”

Alfred arrives, looking disheveled. “Madame Richelle,” he says, lowly. “I would very much appreciate--” he takes in the scene. “... Master Jason? Are you alright?”

“Never better,” Jason says, with his best charming smile. 

“It’s not Richelle!” Dick shouts. “My name is _Richard_ , I don’t _care_ what your stupid gadje papers say!” She kicks Bruce in the shins twice, when that fails to alter his grip in the slightest she crosses her arms in front of her chest and glares at the world in general.

“Yeah,” Jason says. “C’mon B, I promised. My word is my bond.”

Bruce sighs. “You keep finding ways to use my lessons against me.” He carefully sets Dick on her feet. “Please have… Dick back in time to wash up for dinner.”

Dick bounces her way to Jason’s side. Jason’s just hit his growth spurt, isn’t anywhere near done growing yet, but even in his awkward between phase she’s well short of his shoulder. If he hadn’t already known she was twelve he could have believed she was as young as eight. She tugs plaintively on his sleeve. “Your word is your board.”

“Bond,” he corrects, and gives in to ruffling her hair. “C’mon then.” He shoots Bruce a look. “This doesn’t make you my sister.”

“Good,” she tells him matter of factly. “Because I’m an only child.”

“Thank god, I never woulda caught two flying knuckleheads.”

She beams at him, taking his hand in hers. It’s tiny and delicate against Jason’s palm and for a split second he’s worried he’ll crush it. Then she grips and he feels the strength in her fingers, the callouses striping her skin. “Ursula,” she cheers, when he guides her towards the door. She breaks away to do a cartwheel down the front hallway, then backflips and scampers back to tug at his hand. “Stop being so slow!”

Jason sighs. “You’re gonna be the death of me,” he grumbles, and speeds up to hear her cheer again.

++

Dick perches on the custom leather seat. Her arms are too short to reach the handlebars, but she doesn’t let it stop her, holding out her hands and moving them like she’s revving the engines. “Vroom,” she says excitedly. “Vroooom!”

Jason shakes his head at her. “So you’re Dickie.”

“Dick,” she says, leaning her weight to one side like she’s hugging the curve of an imaginary road. “I’m named for my _dat_.”

“Your dad.”

“Yeah.” She goes up on her tiptoes, her eyes wide and excited. “Are you Rom?”

“No, I just guessed.”

“Oh.” She deflates.

“Look,” Jason says, and shows her how to flip the headlights on and off.

Delighted, she settles back into the seat, vrooming along as she plays with the lights. 

“What grade are you in, anyway?”

She shrugs, fiddling with the highbeams. “I dunno.”

“How do you not know what grade you’re in?”

She glares. “I never went to school before. You should know anyway, you’ve already been my old.”

“Your age,” Jason corrects.

Dick makes a very rude gesture, which startles him into a laugh. “Who taught you that?”

“The strongest man in the world!” Dick enthuses. “Atlas The Magnificent!”

“He sounds cool. I bet he’s stronger than B.”

Dick nods fervently. “In the _world_.”

“Anyway. I actually don’t know what grade you’re in, because I wasn’t in school when I was your age either.”

“How come?”

“I dropped out.”

Dick gasps. “Why?”

Jason shrugs. He doesn’t want to get into Catherine and Wilson Todd. Not with somebody he just met, for sure. “Had better things to do. Better places to be.”

“Wow,” Dick says, properly admiring. Jason doesn’t puff out his chest or anything, but it’s more bouying than he’d thought it’d be, making a little kid look at him all impressed like Dick’s doing. “Were you lonely?” Dick asks, and all Jason’s bravado falls away.

“Yeah,” he says, a little quiet. “I was.”

“You shoulda joined the circus,” Dick decides. “Raya’s dad needed a new assistant anyway.”

“Yeah? What’s Raya’s dad do at the circus?”

“Tigers.”

Jason blinks. “That sounds cool. Not as cool as Ursula, though.”

“Nothing is as cool as Ursula,” Dick declares, slumping to drape her little body over as much of the bike as she can. “Maybe Zitka,” she adds guiltily. “Cuz Zitka gives hugs.”

“Is that a tiger?”

“Elephant.”

Jason laughs. “Kid, you’re something else.” He ruffles her hair again. “C’mon, it’s dinner time.”

Dick springs straight up into a handstand, then flips back to land lightly on her feet. “I’m starving!” she declares, and cartwheels all the way back to the front door. It makes Jason dizzy just looking at her. 

Dick pauses, as they pass the stairs, to look thoughtfully up at the chandelier. Jason grabs the back of her shirt. “Not on your life, twerp. Find a new place to give B a stroke.”

He drags her along, ignoring her dug in heels as an automatic reflex of defiance. “What’s a stroke?”

“Wash your hands and I’ll tell you.”

She frowns.

“It’s gross,” Jason entices. “Zombie hands, slurred words. Facial paralysis.”

“Wow,” she breathes, and bolts for the bathroom sink to wash her hands.

++

“Dick,” Bruce says at dinner, after staring placidly into the middle distance during the soup course, during which Jason and Dick loudly and brazenly ran through scenarios they thought might cause him to have a spontaneous stroke. “I checked your papers. Your name is legally Richelle.”

Dick, who’d been bright and cheery and gleefully constructing walrus fangs out of two breadsticks, suddenly dims. She glares at the tabletop, her little fists clenched. “They changed it,” she insists. “It’s not right.”

“Who changed it?”

“B,” Jason breaks in. “Who cares what some paper says. Can’t your fancy lawyer do something for all that money you give him?”

“The name change isn’t an issue,” Bruce says, without looking away from Dick. “Holding the person responsible for it is.”

Dick frowns. “What’s that mean?”

“They changed it when they took you to the orphanage, right?”

Jason’s head whips around. “You went to an orphanage?”

“Yeah,” Dick says, puzzled. “St. Somebody’s.”

“You went to _St. Jude’s_? For how long?” Jason points at Bruce. “What the hell! You let her go to St. Jude’s? Do you know what they--” he cuts himself off. 

Bruce still isn’t looking at him, but his voice is tinged with amusement. “I thought you were upset at Dick’s sudden appearance in the Manor.”

“Whatever,” Jason mutters, thinking about her little excited laugh when Jason lifted up the kickstand and held the bike steady for her, how she extended an offer to join the circus like it wouldn’t have bothered her one bit to have twelve year old Jason, homeless car thief and overall failure, around her family and her elephants. “Doesn’t mean she deserved St. Jude’s.”

“Dick? Can you answer my question?”

Dick is eating mashed potatoes with her fingers. In the corner, Alfred has his eyes averted to the ceiling, probably sending some apology prayer to the Butler God of Manners. “Wha’ question?” Dick asks, with her mouth full. Small bits of potato fall onto the table, the chair, the floor. Alfred crosses himself.

“Did someone at St. Jude’s change your name?”

“Yea,” Dick says, glum again. “They said it wasn’t right, and--” she breaks off, swallows hard, and then stops moving. Jason hadn’t realized how constant it’d been, her swinging legs or her gesturing hands or her head craning to look at absolutely everything at once. Her stillness is unnatural, and it makes Jason itchy, like he wants to go out and find whoever made her sad and punch them until she cheers up again. He pushes it down. “They said some other stuff,” she mutters, eyes a little wet. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t remember.”

It’s the most blatant lie Jason has ever seen, and he’s seen some whoppers. “Thank you,” Bruce says seriously. “I’ll make sure the error is corrected.”

Dick looks up, meeting Bruce’s gaze. “You will?”

“Yes.”

Dick chews her lip. “Her name was Sally. Sally Crenshaw.”

“She will be held accountable.”

Dick smiles, slow and cautious. Under the table, her legs start swinging again. “Is there dessert?”

“Eat your vegetables.”

“Okay,” Dick agrees, and starts picking through her plate for individual peas. She scoots her chair closer to Jason, and beams at him when he looks down at her. 

“What’re you lookin’ at?”

“Your stupid face,” she replies promptly. “After dessert can you take me riding with Ursula?”

Jason looks at Bruce, who hesitates, then nods. “Yeah, kid. Sure. We’ll do donuts.”

“You will _not_ ,” Bruce says sharply.

Jason winks at her.

Alfred sighs.

++

The zeta announces his arrival, depositing him in Mount Justice with a whoosh. Roy raises a hand in greeting where he’s lounging on the sofa in red sweats and a matching domino, but doesn’t look up. Jason vaults over the back of it, landing with a thump half on Roy, half on a cushion. They tussle for a second, Roy bitching insults while Jason guffaws and twists to avoid a gutpunch, before slumping into a half-pile on one end of the sofa, Jason’s legs hanging off. “A sister, huh?”

Jason groans, shoving his face into the back cushion. “Don’t remind me. Shoulda known B couldn’t be trusted out on his own.”

“Just think, if we’d staked out this date you could have prevented getting replaced.”

“Shuddup,” Jason grumbles, not wanting to get into his replacement issues or the embarrassing fact that he had enlisted Roy to follow Bruce around on his dates, when he was new and feeling fragile about his place in Bruce’s life. “You swore a blood oath to forget about that.”

Roy pinches his hip. “Blood oath my ass, we spit-shook.”

“Sharing blood is a biohazard. What if you have secret shameful AIDS, huh?”

Roy punches him in the kidney, jolting Jason off the couch onto the floor. “Fuck you, _Batlad_.”

“Bluejay,” Jason protests grumpily. Roy flips him the bird. They lapse into a comfortable silence, Roy’s foot resting idly on Jason’s sternum. The television drones on, world news as a buzz of background noise. 

“Is she hot, at least?”

Jason digs his fingers into a pressure point in Roy’s ankle, making him yelp in pain, kicking out to break the touch. “She’s twelve, you fucking pervert.”

“My condolences,” Roy offers, starting to laugh. “B couldn’t even pick you up a hot piece of ass to share bunkbeds with--”

Jason lunges up, grabbing Roy around the waist and flipping him over to slam him onto the floor. 

Roy hits him in the kidney again, still laughing. “She’s not really your sister, right? Because in six years--”

Jason tackles him.

++

A sniffle wakes him. He jerks into awareness, his hand slipping under his pillow to where he keeps a knife. “Jay?”

He shoves the knife under the mattress before she can see it, hidden by the edge of the duvet. “Dickie?”

She’s standing in the doorway, the pajama pants too long on her, covering her feet and pooling on the floor. “I had a dream.”

“Yeah?” he sits up, shoving his bedhead out of his eyes. “What kind?”

She shrugs, her face tearstained and her eyes red. “I don’t remember,” she lies.

“Okay. You wanna read a book or something?”

She shrugs again.

Jason shifts back on the mattress, lifting the duvet up. “C’mon, I’ll tell you something cool.”

“Really?” she hops forward, managing not to trip on her own pants, and crawls into bed beside him, scooching back into his warmth. “Like what?”

“I dunno. What do twelve year olds think are cool?”

Dick hums, thinking. “Guns.”

“What? Who’s talking to you about guns?” Jason was expecting Pokemon or Care Bears, not Bruce’s number one inanimate nemesis. 

“Kids play guns at recess.”

Jason makes a disapproving noise. “Guns aren’t a game. They’re definitely not cool.”

“Okay,” Dick says agreeably. “What do you think is cool?”

“Uh,” Jason says, backed into a corner of his own design. What do normal non-orphaned circus girls like. “... ponies?”

“Haly’s had ponies,” Dick offers. “We did rides, on performance nights.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhm. There were three of them. I had to clean out their stalls when I got in trouble.”

Jason mock gasps. “You? In trouble?”

Dick giggles, squirming a little until Jason settles an arm across her waist and tugs her closer. “One time I tied all the shoelaces together in box six.”

“Box six?”

“Clown car,” Dick clarifies. “I thought they’d think it was funny.”

“Bruce just makes me wax the cars when I act up. The worst is when you make Alfred mad, though. Do you know how long it takes to polish silver? And who cares if the silver is shiny, right?”

“Right,” Dick agrees, clearly not understanding a word of what he’s said but loyal to a fault anyway. She snuggles down into the sheets. “You said you would tell me something cool,” she accuses, her voice small and sleepy. “Your word is your board.”

“Bond,” Jason says, flicking her ear. “Brat.”

“Something cool,” she insists.

“I fight crime,” Jason says, and represses a wince.

Dick snorts.

“Hey, I do! With my friends. We wear spandex and everything.”

Dick dissolves into giggles, pitched higher when Jason wiggles his fingers into her ribs. 

“See if I help you the next time someone steals your Yugioh cards.”

“Yugioh is a cartoon,” Dick informs him.

“You are the ignorant youth,” Jason tells her. “Alfred was right. Now go to sleep.”

“Okay,” she agrees, and turns to snuggle her face into Jason’s chest.

++

Jason cuts the last two periods in favor of going home, leaving his bag and his shoes in a crumpled heap by the front door that Alfred will rag on him about later, and beelining to the kitchen, where he sticks an entire apple into his mouth to chomp down on while he forages in the fridge for a more satisfying snack. He’s just starting to pick at the saranwrap over last night’s roast leftovers when he hears the front door slam. 

“I don’t care!” Dick screeches. Something thumps against a wall. “You’re not my dad!” Little feet pelt on the floor, pounding up the stairs. In the near distance, a door slams. 

Bruce enters the kitchen, looking like a thundercloud. Jason freezes, the apple still in his mouth, backlit by the fridge. “Um. We had a half day?” His voice is garbled around the fruit.

Bruce glowers. “Try again.”

Jason slumps, the apple dropping into his hand. “I ditched.”

Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose. “No downstairs for a week..”

“What?” Jason flushes, he can feel the heat of it in his cheeks. “I have a… trip next week, you can’t just--”

“We had a deal. YJ means your grades don’t falter.”

“I’m pulling a 4.0,” Jason snarls. “I’m, I’m managing my time, I’m keeping my end up. Two classes isn’t going to--”

“Jason,” Bruce barks, “it can be two weeks.”

“I’m not a little kid,” Jason hisses. “You can’t put me in a corner because the circus menace is making headaches at elementary school.”

“If you don’t want to be treated like a little kid,” Bruce says acidly, “then stop acting like one.”

Jason throws the apple at the wall, his temper snapping. It explodes on impact, leaving a wet splash on the wallpaper. “Go fuck yourself.”

“You are overstepping,” Bruce warns. His voice doesn’t gentle, but his face has smoothed over. “Take a deep breath.”

When Jason was just a few years younger, he needed that. Needed Bruce to stay flat and affectless and tell him to breathe, until the red faded from around his eyes and the need to feel the skin around his knuckles split open on someone’s face softened to its normal continuous itch. Now he’s sixteen and all it does it make all the sound in the world mute to the dull roar of violence thrumming in his blood. He starts forward and Bruce doesn’t move, his weight shifting into something just short of a battle stance.

A tiny blur flings itself onto Bruce’s back, arms tightening around Bruce’s neck. “Jay!” Dick squeaks, eyes wide and panicked. “Run!”

Jason boggles. “Wha--Bruce!”

Bruce, on instinct, had started a takedown move that would have left Dick’s arm broken, her ribs cracked. Even aborted, Dick loses her grip, tumbling headfirst towards the floor. Bruce grunts, twisting hard, and catches her before she falls. Jason darts in, scooping her out of Bruce’s arms and retreating to the far wall. “What the hell, kid? You coulda been hurt.”

“He was gonna hit you,” Dick says mulishly, glaring at Bruce from the safety of Jason’s hold. “I could tell.”

“He wasn’t,” Jason says. If nothing else, he knows Bruce isn’t--isn’t like that. He’d tried, when he’d first come to the Manor, tried everything he could think of to make Bruce snap and lash out. There’d been a lot of yelling and slammed doors and Alfred’s deepy disapproving silences aimed at both sides, but he’d settled that question mark. “I promise, Dickie.”

Dick frowns. “Really?” Her voice comes out small. 

“Really really,” Jason promises. “Right, B?”

“Of course,” Bruce says quietly. His posture shifts, deliberately nonthreatening. “I didn’t realize that’s what you were worried about, Dick.”

“I got in a fight,” Dick confesses to Jason. 

“So?”

Bruce clears his throat and Jason makes a disapproving noise at Dick instead, which is hypocritical of him but seems to be the responsible route. 

“They were picking on a little kid,” Dick protests. “One of the kindergarteners. I had to do something. I had to.”

Jason sighs. “Did you win the fight?”

“No,” Dick says. Guiltily.

“Yes,” Bruce says. “Handily. Against three older boys.”

“Atta girl,” Jason says, then coughs when he feels the weight of Bruce’s glare. “I mean. No dessert?”

Dick gasps, betrayed. “What about cookies?”

“Cookies are dessert.”

Dick makes a small noise of dismay. Then she mashes her face into Jason’s neck as she gives him a hug just short of active strangling. “Okay.” She wriggles free, runs over to Bruce, and looks suitably abashed, rocking up and down on her toes with her hands behind her back. “I’m sorry I yelled.”

Bruce grunts.

“And kicked your car.”

Jason hides a snicker in his hand.

“And threw my shoe at you.”

“Go to your room,” Bruce says. “We’ll talk after dinner.”

Dick nods, turned to leave, then pauses. She darts back in, hugging Bruce’s leg fiercely, then skips away, singing some song about a trapeze. Once she’s gone, Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose again.

“She threw a shoe at you?”

Bruce doesn’t sigh, but it’s a near thing. “She threw both shoes at me.”

Jason laughs in his face. “And to think I was against her coming to live with us.”

“She said something very interesting, while she was… discussing the incident in the car.”

“Cussed you out, huh,” Jason says, sympathetic.

“In multiple languages. She also said that you fight crime.”

Jason, lounging against the center island, goes stock still. “Um.”

“She seemed to think it involves push ups and chess tournaments.”

“And paperwork,” Jason adds. “I really tried to push the paperwork angle.”

“What,” Bruce says, and it’s with the utterly flat tone that means Jason really is one smartass comment away from getting benched indefinitely, “were you thinking?”

“It slipped out,” Jason mutters guiltily.

“It _slipped_ out?”

“She lives here,” Jason points out, “because you brought her here, and you think, what? She can make it to eighteen without noticing? Did you try to hide it from Alfred?”

“Alfred is not a twelve year old girl with anger issues.”

“No,” Jason says snidely, “that’s you.”

Bruce slams a clenched fist down so hard the granite vibrates. If he’d been wearing a gauntlet it would have cracked with the force. “She’s a child.”

“So was I,” Jason shoots back. “But she’s better, right? Not gutter trash, huh? Not like the alleyrat you caught liftin’ your rims.”

“This is not what I taught you,” Bruce admonishes, like Jason’s fucked up a hand-to-hand drill, not bared an insecurity so raw it’s still bleeding. 

Jason takes a breath, with an effort. “I know. I shouldn’t have given her any hints. It was a mistake.”

“Yes. But that’s not what I’m talking about.” Bruce lays a hand on his shoulder. “I wouldn’t waste resources on someone I didn’t believe in.”

It’s not an _I love you_. It’s so much better.

Jason basks in the warmth of it. 

“You’re right,” Bruce admits. “She can’t stay here and not know. But I think we can give her a little longer to settle in, make sure it’s the right fit--”

Jason stiffens, indignant. “You can’t send her back!” Not to St. Jude’s. “I’ll leave,” he threatens, his heart beating rabbit fast and sweat breaking out along his hairline. It’s a threat he’s never let loose before, because he’s terrified it’s a threat that doesn’t threaten Bruce at all. But he’s in now, and Jason’s never been the one to fold just because he’s got a lousy hand. “I will. I can hide in the Narrows, not even Batman could find us. She’s not going back, back to,” he falters.

Bruce is watching him with quiet thoughtful eyes. “To St. Jude’s.”

Jason swallows. “Yes.”

“Why are you so insistent? Did you spend time there?”

“No, it’s just.” Jason falters. “I knew some girls that came out of there, that’s all.” Some girls with hollowed out eyes and scars on the inside worse than anything on their skin. Girls with black eyes and mean pimps, girls with empty smiles and track marks between their fingers and toes. 

Bruce’s jaw clenches. “I see.”

Jason nods, still breathing kinda quick. “Okay. Good.” He rubs the back of his neck. “It’s not like I’m attached or anything.”

“Of course,” Bruce says. The corner of his mouth tips up, so slight that most people wouldn’t notice. Jason isn’t most people.

“I’m not,” he insists. “Just… no one deserves that.”

“You’re right,” Bruce says, serious again. “Even if she doesn’t stay here--” he raises a hand to fend off Jason’s disagreement-- “because I won’t make her, if she wants to go somewhere else. But that somewhere else won’t be anything less than a safe healthy home for her. I’ll ensure it.”

“Okay,” Jason says. He rolls his shoulders, trying to force his posture to ease. “I am sorry. I know I fucked up.”

“Language,” Bruce says, and Jason knows they’re okay.

++

“Hey,” Jason says, after Bruce has gone out for the night and Alfred has retired to his personal quarters. “You awake?”

Dick sits up immediately. “Yeah.”

“Good. We gotta talk.” Jason sits on the edge of her bed, patting the mattress beside him. “C’mon.”

Dick clambers over, obedient, but doesn’t immediately lean into Jason’s side. “I had a dream,” she says. 

“Bad dream?”

“No,” Dick says, morose. “A good one.”

“And then you woke up and it turned bad cuz it wasn’t true, huh?”

“Yeah,” Dick says, surprised. “How’d you know that?”

“I have those too.”

“Oh,” Dick says, and then snuggles up against Jason’s flank. “I’m sorry.”

“S’okay.” Jason curls an arm around her slender shoulders, tugging her closer. “You know who else has those?”

Dick’s face scrunches up, thinking deeply. “Alfred?”

“Huh. I don’t know, actually. But Bruce does.”

Dick jolts in surprise. “He does?”

“Yeah. And nightmares, too.”

“Bruce has _nightmares_?”

“Yup. Know it for a fact.”

“Oh.” Dick leans her head on Jason’s ribs. “I didn’t know that. I don’t mean to make him mad.”

Jason snorts in disbelief. “Really?”

“Not every time.”

“Sometimes is okay,” Jason decides. 

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’ll be good for him. But not all the time, huh? Let me have some of the times.”

Dick is quiet for a long time, long enough that Jason thinks she’s fallen asleep. He eases her down, arranging the pillow under her head. “Okay,” she whispers, while he’s tucking the blanket back around her shoulders. “You can have some of the times.”

“Thanks Dickiebird,” Jason says softly, and kisses her forehead.

She chirps at him, low and sleepy, and curls up into a little ball. Jason leaves the light in the hall on, leaves the door cracked. Adds checking on her to the list of things he does before bed, after checking to make sure the windows are locked and before washing his face.

++

“You call Jason Master Jason,” Dick says, on her tiptoes at Alfred’s elbow and trying sneak pinches of cookie dough. “You call--” Alfred smacks her encroaching wrist and she yelps before continuing. “You call Bruce Master Bruce. I wanna be Master Dick.”

Jason, doling out cookie dough in little teaspoon lumps onto a baking sheet, snickers. “Yeah, Al. Why can’t there, at long last, be one Master Dick in this house?”

Alfred looks at him, unimpressed, before returning his attention to Dick. “I called you Madame Richelle,” he says, “when we met.”

Dick’s sunny smile turns upside down faster than the speed of light. Jason tenses; Alfred might not know the name change continues to be a hotton button issue, even though Bruce had gotten everything legally corrected a month ago.

“I apologize,” Alfred says gravely, “Master Grayson.”

Jason holds his breath.

Dick considers it, then smiles. “I like that. Grayson.” She hops up onto the counter next to Jason. “Jay,” she whispers, “lemme have one.”

“No way, Jose. I’m not going up against Al with cookies on the line. You’re lucky you even got in here in your first year. Younger siblings really do have it easier.”

“I’m the Girl Wonder,” Dick informs him. She spreads her arms out to an invisible audience, leaping to her feet and balancing precariously on the edge of the counter. “The one the only!”

Jason scoops her up, arm around her waist, and turns in a circle, twirling her while she shrieks in joy and Alfred steps out of the way with a longsuffering expression. “Girl Menace, more like,” he teases, dropping her safely onto a nearby stool. “Hold still and Alfred will let you lick the batter spoon.”

Dick looks at Alfred.

“You must hold very still, Master Grayson.”

Dick beams. “Okay. I can be still.”

++

She cannot, actually, be still. Alfred bans her from the kitchen for life, dinner is late by half an hour. Bruce doesn’t tell Jason he’s got flour in his hair and all four current members of Young Justice laugh directly in his face about it. Roy takes pictures.


	2. Wally

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Thought you’d be smart enough not to come round here," Jason says, scowling. "Although it does lessen my commute to and from your ass kicking.”
> 
> Wally West, in civilian clothes, droops. “Hiya Jason.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still no beta! And this underwent a sudden bout of editing just before I posted that including adding a bunch of Roy in here instead of waiting for the next chapter, so I'm sure there's some horrific typos/editing things I've missed, which I apologize for in advance.
> 
> Some nice people pointed out that I haven't tagged this with what I said would be coming, and that's because I feel bad tagging it Explicit Dick/Jason when that hasn't actually happened yet in the story? I don't want someone to click on it and then get cranky when there is no actual sex or Dick/Jason happening yet. So I'll update the tags as I post new chapters, if that's okay. 
> 
> New tags this chapter: Hurt/Comfort, Jason Todd & Roy Harper, Dick Grayson & Wally West. There is also the barest hint of Conner & Dick Grayson, but it wasn't enough I felt it warranted a tag.

The first time Bruce opened the gym up and Dick saw the entire section designed especially for her: the rigging, the rings, the bars, she’d shrieked loud enough to pierce eardrums, used Jason’s shoulders to vault over Bruce’s head in a backflip, then sprinted up the rigging and disappeared into the shadows near the ceiling. 

“I think she likes it,” Jason muttered, rubbing at his shoulder. 

“Hm,” Bruce had commented. Above their heads, Dick flew, cackling the whole time. The cackling ended in a part of the room that doesn’t involve the rigging, but didn’t yield a tiny teenaged menace fueled by aerial acrobatics. “We’re going to need more safety nets.”

 

And since then, it’s where Dick goes when she’s upset. 

Jason, personally, hates the fucking rigging. It makes him feel clumsy and off balance and awkward, and he cusses his way up with every fucking step. This is what he gets for giving Roy the cold shoulder. Nothing better to do than drag his sad ass around the Manor and hang out with his kid sister.

Dick waits, watching his progress curiously. “I could teach you how to do it better.”

“Or you could sulk in a normal place,” Jason grunts, flopping next to Dick with an effort. “Not everyone can be a circus freak.”

Dick glares. “I hate him,” she declares.

“I’ll kill him for you,” Jason offers promptly. It’s something to do that isn’t mope around looking at Roy’s number in his phone and rereading their last spat via texts. “Give me a name.”

“You won’t,” she says mulishly. “He’s too _special_.”

“No one is too special for these guns,” Jason tells her. He flexes.

“He thinks he’s so cool,” Dick fumes, ignoring his posturing in favor of smacking her fist into her palm. “Just because he’s sooo fast.”

Jason is starting to get a better picture of what’s going on. “This is about Wally.”

Dick punches her fist again. 

“Well I don’t see the problem. I can definitely handle Kid Twerp.”

“He tried to pull my mask off. In front of everybody.”

“He _what_?”

“It didn’t work,” Dick scoffs. “Like it could. And I kicked him really hard after.”

“In the head?”

“In the junk.”

A flush of pride warms Jason’s chest. “Hell fucking yeah you did.” He holds out a palm. “Put ‘em there.”

The high five manages to get a smile out of her, even if it fades as quickly as it came. “It shocked him, you know, how it does. And Dinah yelled at him. It just--when he grabbed it, he was laughing.”

Jason scowls. “He won’t be laughing in a minute, I can promise you that.” 

Dick hunches her shoulders. “I just never… I never felt like that before. Not ever.”

Jason forces himself to relax, to slide closer and let her lay her head on his shoulder. Forces his tone even and his face soft. “Like how?”

Dick shrugs. “I dunno. It’s weird.”

“Like he was in your space?” Jason prompts. “Like… what was some stupid joke to him would have made you feel small and rattled and like he did it just to show he could take power from you if he felt like it?”

Dick breathes unsteadily against his shoulder. “Yeah,” she says, in a tiny voice. “What’s that called?”

It’s called the Flash better tell his siblings to start making him more nephews, because the current one just signed his own death warrant. “I‘m not sure,” he says, setting the thought aside for later (and it there will be a later). “I don’t think there’s a name for it, exactly. If there is I don’t know it.”

“But you know everything.”

Jason snorts. “C’mon. You’re fourteen, you know I don’t know everything.”

“Yeah,” Dick says, after a pause, and Jason gasps, loud and mournful.

“Dickie, you’re supposed to say ‘no Jason, you’re my big brother and you know absolutely all there is to know and I’ll do anything for you, even wax all twelve of Bruce’s identical Ferraris.”

Dick snorts. “Okay, Jay. Cuz you were so helpful when I asked you which hole to put the tampon in.”

Jason groans, covering his eyes. “I thought we agreed we’d never speak of that again.” The search history on his phone will never recover. Thank god Kori picked up his call.

“I would never have agreed to that.”

“This is the teeanged sass,” Jason tells the ceiling mournfully. “It’s begun. My sweet, darling, baby sister--”

Dick hits him in the face with a towel. A sweaty towel. “Jerk.”

He tosses the towel back at her. “Menace. Wanna spar?”

“I did a few rounds in the sim,” she tells him, looking guilty again.

“Without supervision? B’s gonna find out.”

“I know,” she groans, throwing an arm over her eyes dramatically. “Do you think tampons will distract him too?”

“Not a chance. How about I turn the hot water timer off, you get in the shower, and I make a few pancakes? We can watch cartoons until Alfred and B get home. And your sentence begins.”

She sticks her tongue out at him. “You don’t…” she visibly changes what she was going to say. “Have stuff?”

“Nah. Nothing until patrol with B later.”

“Okay.” She hops off the rigging into thin air--Jason’s heart leaps, every goddamn time--and tucks into a triple somersault. She always drops out before the fourth turn. She catches herself on the bars, swinging gracefully into a dismount. She sticks it.

Jason climbs down, slowly, draggingly, interspersed with angry cussing. “I’m taller than you,” he says, when he’s managed to put both feet on the ground. 

She rolls her eyes.

 

Jason’s got a nice little stack of pancakes going, regular and blueberry banana, when the doorbell rings. For a second, he doesn’t move, before he remembers: Alfred’s not home. He flips the burner off, moves the pan onto the counter, and ambles for the door. When he opens it, he’s scowling. “Thought you’d be smart enough not to come round here. Although it does lessen my commute to and from your ass kicking.”

Wally West, in civilian clothes, droops. “Hiya Jason.”

“Take your hiya and fuck yourself with it.”

Wally’s eyes go flinty and determined. He tries to duck under Jason’s arm. “I gotta talk to Dickie.”

“You gotta get the hell out of my face before I make a dent in it, West,” Jason snarls, shoving Wally back. “I don’t think you wanna press me on your inability to take no for an answer.”

Wally’s jaw flexes. “You can’t stop me,” he threatens. At fifteen, he’s got nothing on Jason in either weight or height, but he’s also vibrating slightly in place. “Not if I really wanted to.” 

“Oh yeah?” Jason asks, voice deceptively soft. “Is that what you said to her?”

Wally flinches. He slumps. “I gotta apologize,” he mutters. “I didn’t mean it like--how people thought.”

“People?”

Wally looks morose. “Artie. Kaldur. _Dinah_. God help me when Connor finds out.”

Jason snorts. “Anybody not rip on you?”

“No,” Wally says glumly, “Diana called Uncle Barry directly. “ He kicks at the ground. “But I don’t even care about that.”

“You don’t care that Wonder Woman is disappointed in you, specifically?” Personally, that knowledge would crush Jason. It’s possible he has a bias, whatever. Uncle Clark got him headphones for Christmas; Diana got him a sword and two whole encyclopedias of Greek myths.

“No. I mean, yeah, of course, it’s the worst, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is…” Wally trails off, misery etched on his face. He must be really feeling it, if he’s speaking at such a normal pace and volume.

“Is what,” Jason prompts.

“That I made Dickie cry,” Wally mutters. “I really messed up. I gotta fix it.” 

“She didn’t cry.” Jason jabs a finger at his chest. “And if you hear anyone say so, you better set them straight.”

Wally’s shoulders lift. He nods. Then he tries to go by Jason again and Jason hipchecks him back.

“Hot tip, moron. You don’t get to decide when to apologize. You gotta wait for permission.”

Wally frowns. “What if she doesn’t give it?”

“Then you fucked up too bad.” Jason shrugs. “It is what it is.”

“Dick’s my best friend,” Wally says hotly. “Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean--”

Jason looms. Wally might bulk up like his uncle someday--probably will, they all have--but for now Jason’s got physical intimidation on his side and Dick’s always liked long showers but that doesn’t mean she won’t pick today to amble out while he’s trying to throw a teenage meta out on his ass. “Shut up,” Jason hisses. “God I thought you were annoying when I had to babysit you.”

Wally vibrates. “You didn’t babysit me, you asshole, you’re barely three years older than me.”

Jason sneers at him. “The truth hurts, Flash Lite. Roy was babysitting us both. Now get out of here before I embarrass you in front of the Speed Force.” 

Wally blurs into motion, faster than the eye can catch, faster than Jason’s muscle twitch reflex. He turns, not bothering to try and track the kid’s movements, and grabs a fancy vase from a small table beside the door. He flings it at the base of the stairs, where it impacts the orange blur dashing up towards the second floor. Wally grunts, slowing to figure out what just hit him; Jason lunges, taking advantage of the distraction. The vase bounces to the floor, shattering.

As soon as he gets a grip on Wally’s sweats, Jason digs in. The second Wally is free, he’s gone, but as long as they’re grappling on the ground, Jason has the advantage. To Wally’s credit and Jason’s ire, Wally fights the way he must have been trained: dirty. Jason barely avoids a thumb headed for his eye socket, grunting as a lightning fast series of jabs hammer into his side. 

Wally’s scrappy and he’s powered but Jason’s older, bigger, stronger. Been in more real fights, been in real battles. He twists, hitting a few pressure points along the way to slow Wally down, and gets an arm around Wally’s throat. Six seconds to total unconsciousness, then Jason can figure out what kind of dick he’s gonna draw on the kid’s face.

Then Bruce grabs his ear. “Jason,” he greets mildly, hauling Jason off the ground. “Wallace.”

On all fours on the stairs, Wally wheezes. 

Clark Kent, of all people, taps Jason out of Bruce’s grasp and pats his shoulder. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Jason mutters. He dusts imaginary lint off himself and glares at Wally, who’s giving him the evil eye right back. 

“Care to explain?” It’s an order, no matter how blandly phrased, and Jason winces.

“He wasn’t invited.”

“I’m not a vampire,” Wally shoots back. “Dick said I’m welcome any time.”

“It’s called consent, asshole,” Jason snarls, moving forward again. Clark stops him with one finger. “Learn it or I’ll beat it into you.”

“Jason,” Bruce says, and Jason slumps. “Dick is perfectly capable of looking out for herself.” He stares directly at Wally. “And I’m sure Wallace will be on his very best behaviour.”

Wally gulps. He heads up the stairs at a sedate rate, shoulders squared.

Jason tries a grin. “Thought you wanted me to mentor more?”

“Strangling isn’t mentoring. Go help Alfred with dinner.”

“It was mentoring when you strangled me and called it training,” Jason shoots back. Clark gives Bruce a disapproving look, which is exactly what Jason was aiming for, and Jason scurries out to the kitchen before Bruce can retaliate.

Then he ducks up the back stairs and out the window, crawling to crouch on the roof just above Dick’s bedroom window. 

“--didn’t mean it like that,” Wally is saying. Jason slides down, just a touch, to peek through the top of the window and see Dick in sweats and one of Jason’s t-shirts, barefoot, hair wet from the shower. She always looks younger like that, in oversized clothing and her hair down.

“I know,” Dick says. “What did you think would happen?”

“That it would shock me, and I would yelp, and everyone would laugh.”

“You made me flinch,” Dick says softly, and Jason’s gratified to see Wally’s wince, understanding the gravity of the admission. “Everyone saw.”

“I know. I messed up. I’m sorry.”

“I’m the youngest,” Dick says, a little bit of her temper starting to bleed through. “The smallest, Bluejay to live up to, I let you close because I _trusted_ you.”

“I know,” Wally says, starting to pace. Standing in front of her bed, Dick’s eyes flit to the window, catching Jason watching.

Jason winces, ducking back up to the roof, but he knows he’s been busted. His phone buzzes: Roy wants to meet him at the old amusement park in Star City. There’s just enough looseness in his spelling that Jason can tell he’s buzzed. He shoves his phone back into his pocket without responding.

“--know that now,” Wally is saying, when Jason refocuses. “And I know saying sorry doesn’t make it better right away, but I can wait.”

Dick laughs a little, soft and sweet, and Jason knows Wally’s forgiven. “You hate waiting, Walls.”

“Well. I can wait for you.”

“Kid Sap,” Dick teases. “Wanna stay for a while? Jay made pancakes.”

“Nah, I gotta get back. Uncle Barry totally grounded me and Aunt Iris said we ‘need to talk’. But I’ll see you tomorrow, at training?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Dick says, and there’s the sounds of people moving around, the door closing. “Get in here before you fall off the roof again.”

Jason swings in, closing the window behind him. “I didn’t fall off the roof. I’ve never _fallen_ off a roof.”

“Yeah, Kiteman threw you off. That’s more embarrassing than falling. Why were you even out there, you creep.”

She’s not wrong about Kiteman, so Jason ignores her. “Does this mean I can’t beat him up?”

“He said you already did, a little.”

Jason flops onto her bed onto his back and crams one of her pillows under his head. “Speedsters heal fast. He won’t even bruise.”

Dick crawls up to sit cross legged next to him on the mattress. “I feel stupid. It wasn’t a big deal, enough for you guys to scrap about it. I made it a big deal because I couldn’t control myself in the moment. Batman would have never.”

Jason snorts. “Yeah, ‘cuz that would require a real feeling and he’s been shooting emotional blanks since the nineties.”

Dick picks at the duvet, frowning. “I guess. I’m gonna start meditating, though.”

Dick hates meditating. There’s no way she lasts a week. Jason doesn’t say anything, but Dick sticks her tongue out at him anyway. “I’ll start meditating, you text Roy back. He texted _me_ yesterday.”

Jason frowns. “What did he say?”

“He offered to meet and ‘work on a case’.” Dick is making air quotes with her fingers. “I told him that you jack it at night thinking of him wandering Star City alone like Heathcliff on the moors--”

Jason kicks her in the ribs. She tumbles off the edge of the bed, catching herself with her fingers and swinging back around with a cackle, his shirt hanging off one of her shoulders and rippling with her movement like a cape. She kicks him in the leg to make him flinch and curse, before settling back down just out of striking distance. Jason is too flushed, under his collar. “We’re not fighting,” he grumbles, hunching into the his jacket. “He quit the team, he can’t be mad we don’t see each other as much anymore. Idiot.”

“I’ll start meditating,” Dick offers, “and you text Roy back.”

“Fine,” Jason mutters. He’s about one day away from having Kori sling him over her shoulder and fly him over to have it out with Roy anyway. And if he’s ever caved and gone through his phone for old pictures of them to glare moodily at in the middle of the night… he was trained by Batman, gothic brooding was always going to be in the cards. 

They sit in companionable silence, Jason just starting to doze off before Dick’s voice stirs him.

“Hey, Jay?”

He hums.

“Thanks for being such a creep.”

He smiles, eyes closed. Dick’s warm weight settles against his side; her nose presses into his neck. “Gettin’ too old to cuddle like this, Dickie.”

“No,” she says, biting his shoulder through his shirt. “Never.”

Jay doesn’t sleep, but he drifts, enjoying the muted background noises of the manor and Dick’s soft breathing, the press of her chest against his side. He can feel her mischief before she speaks, little flexes of her sternum as she giggles to herself and tries to hide it from him.

“Hey,” Dick says, and her voice has gone sly. Jason opens one suspicious eye. “Do you think Wally vibrates, like, _all_ over?”

The question settles into Jason’s mind like a volcano erupting. “You little shit,” he starts, and Dick vaults off the bed, doing an entirely unnecessary backspring as she escapes out the door. “You can run,” he shouts, barreling after her, “you can hide--” he swats at her and she dodges, flipping off the wall and sending a painting crashing to the ground-- “but I will kill that ginger freak if you let him touch you!”

++

“I wanna go out,” Dick decides. “On patrol.”

Jason looks down at his uniform. “We’re not goin’ to the roller rink.”

“Alone,” Dick clarifies.

Jason laughs in her face. 

“I’m serious,” Dick insists, clutching at her thigh where her escrima sticks are holstered. “I know you did it at my age. I’m ready. Back me up to Batman.”

Jason is still laughing. “No way. This is not the hill I’m dying on.”

Batman swishes into view, already fully suited up. “Let’s go.”

“Batman,” Dick says, earnest behind her mask, the Robin hood down on her back. “I was thinking I could go the East route today.”

Batman frowns. It’s hard to see, because the mask gives him a sort of perpetual scowl, but they can tell. “There’s a drug shipment coming in on the docks.”

Dick holds her ground. “A small one. You can Bluejay can handle it, and I can make sure Black Mask isn’t moving in on the Warehouse District again. Surveillance only.”

“Out of the question.”

Dick’s hands clench into tiny fists. “I can do it. I’ve gone on Young Justice missions, I’ve worked with Batwoman. I don’t need a chaperone for basic intel gathering.”

“No.”

“You’re treating me different because I’m a girl,” Dick accuses. “Jason did full solo missions when he was my age. You just don’t trust me!”

Batman looms, the shadows warping around him. “You,” he growls. “Will stay behind. You will review footage from the bodega robbery yesterday and write a full report. We will not discuss this again.”

Dick vibrates with fury.

“Dickie,” Jason says softly, trying to diffuse the situation before it blows. “C’mon.”

“Fine,” she snarls. She stomps to a terminal, yanking her mask off and slapping it against the table in frustration. 

They take the car. Jason waits until they’ve roared out of the passageway onto the road, Gotham’s lights getting brighter as they get closer, before speaking. “There’s no way you don’t end up discussing that again.”

Batman sighs. “I know.”

“I could follow her,” Jason offers. “Be back up, practice my stealth at the same time.”

Batman grunts. 

“And we didn’t need her on this one.”

“Harvey’s been spotted in the Warehouse District.”

“Ah,” Jason says. “Yeah, she’s not going there alone. Why aren’t we going there?”

“Waiting on developments,” Batman says shortly. “He’s up to something.”

“They’re always up to something.” Jason taps his fingers against his thigh, slowing his breathing and getting into his headspace. “She’s gonna lead Young Justice one day, you know. Even Kaldur knows it.”

Batman almost smiles. “She’s going to lead the League one day.”

 

The fight is quick and clean and Batman even lets him stick around when the cops roll up instead of sending him back to the car to wait. They look at Jason like he can handle himself in a fight, something almost like camaraderie between them. Jason’s still grinning when they get back to the cave.

“Dickie,” he crows, vaulting out of the car as soon as it’s parked. “Quit pouting. Victory pancakes!”

His voice echoes around the cavern. There’s no reply. The terminal Dick was sitting at is still on, grainy security cam footage playing on the screen. Jason frowns. “B?”

Batman touches his comm. “Agent A. Where is Robin?” Whatever he hears makes him scowl even harder. “Check the rigging,” he snaps at Jason, and heads for the locker room and private shower.

 

Jason climbs up the rig in the back, where Dick likes to flip around and hide in the high shadows and be an overall menace to all occupants of the cave, including the bats. He checks the dinosaur, he checks the weapons range, he checks the supply closet. 

Batman is waiting when he returns to the car. “Her comm is off,” Batman says shortly, face pinched. “Take the zeta to Mt. Justice, then Star City.”

“Yeah,” Jason says, “no. I’m going with you to the Warehouse District.”

“No.”

Jason scowls. “I’m not an idiot, Bruce. We both know that’s where she went. Tell me the tracker in her suit isn’t confirming it.”

Batman is silent.

“Yeah, I know about the trackers. I’m not even mad, I know how you are. A tracker in my sneakers, that’s something we’d have a problem with.”

“Noted,” Bruce says, after a pause. “I could use a distraction while I extract her.”

“Something loud and bright,” Jason says, with a grin. “Just like old times.”

 

It’s not like old times. It’s not like a time Jason has ever had, the car fishtailing as Batman pushes it to the limits, Dick limp and bloody in Jason’s lap in the backseat. They hadn’t waited for the cops, hadn’t waited for anything. Hadn’t even tied Two Face up before sprinting for the car and frantically radioing Alfred. 

“Dickie,” Jason whispers, curled around her battered body, his forehead against hers. In the front, Bruce is giving orders in his tersest, most furious tone that only comes out when someone needs a major blood transfusion. “I got you.”

Jason rips his gloves off to hold her hand in his, squeeze it tight, keep a finger on the weak flutter of life in her wrist. A dribble of blood slips out from between her slack lips, the dry rattle of her labored breathing. It stains her teeth red and drips down her cheek. Jason swipes it away with his thumb. It sinks into his skin, wet and still warm, slick and sticky. “I got you,” he promises. 

++

Roy finds him on the roof, shivering under the bite of the freezing wind blowing in from Gotham. Just like the rest of her, Gotham’s winters are brutal: take no prisoners, have no mercy. But tonight Jason can’t feel anything except the way Dick’s blood is dried and flaking on his skin.

“Hey,” Roy says, shifting on his feet. “Oliver told me.”

Jason should be frowning, but he’s just. Sitting slumped against the brick of the chimney, an unlit cigarette between his fingers. “How’d he know?”

“B called in a League Doctor.”

“Huh.” The knowledge twists in Jason’s gut. If Bruce didn’t get Leslie here, went straight for a League resource… his mind shies away. Bruce is overprotective, controlling, paranoid, that’s all. He overcompensated. Dickie isn’t hurt that bad.

A weight settles around his shoulders; he can smell Roy’s aftershave and the faintness of the laundry detergent. Roy tucks the edges of his jacket around Jason’s shoulders, then sits next to him, elbows brushing. 

“You’re gonna freeze,” Jason says, at some point afterwards. 

Roy shrugs. He holds up a flask. 

Jason mind snaps out its haze. He scowls.

“There he is,” Roy says, eyes dark in the shadows. “I was worried for a second. It’s not for me. You need a sip or two.”

Jason hesitates.

Roy shakes it at him. “C’mon. You’re not the one with the issue.”

Jason takes the flask. He sips, the harsh tang of it against his tongue and the trail of warmth it leaves. He drains it, then lets it drop to the roof with a metallic clatter. “Should have known,” he says, and then his words run dry. He shakes his head. “Should have seen it.”

“Careful,” Roy says, cutting off his self-recriminations. “You’re starting to sound just like your old man.” He reaches over and takes Jason’s cigarette out of his limp fingers, nudges it between Jason’s lips. “Let’s get a little more poison into you; you’ll feel more human less bat.”

The lighter snaps to life, the flame protected by Roy’s cupped palm. Jason inhales, feels the nicotine hit the back of his throat. Roy stays leaned close; when Jason exhales the smoke wisps around his face and his hair before dissipating up into the sky. Jason takes three more long slow drags. 

Roy leans back against the chimney, sliding closer to use Jason as a shield against the wind. “Feel better?”

“Yeah,” Jason says, and he’s surprised at himself. “I do.”

Roy nods. He looks tired, suddenly. There are lines around his eyes like he’s got a headache. “Tried and true,” he says, and reaches over to take the cigarette out of Jason’s mouth for himself. “Don’t make a habit of it, or anything.” He holds up his hand under the dim lights on the balcony, the dim slow glow of the moon setting and the sun rising. Fine trembles shake his fingers. “It’s hell on the aim.”

Jason shakes his head. “You could aim just as good with one arm, Harper. Don’t make excuses.”

“You sound like Donna.”

“You sound like my old man,” Jason snaps, and Roy jerks, tensing. Then he relaxes, his jaw clenched but his hands open and lax instead of fisted. 

“Not tonight,” he says, instead of escalating.

The tension slides out of Jason’s spine. He lets himself sag against Roy’s side. “He called a League doctor.”

Roy gives him the cigarette, warm from Roy’s fingers, damp from Roy’s lips. They sit in silence until it’s burned down and Jason flicks it away. “It is what it is,” Roy says finally, and puts an arm around Jason’s shoulders to watch the sunrise.

++

“Jay,” Dick rasps, sixteen hours later. “Ow.”

Jason jerks from where he’d been slumped in a chair at her bedside, Roy’s jacket crumpled against his back. The first thing he sees is his hands, lax in his lap; her blood on his skin. He shakes himself into awareness, scrubbing his hand against his pants. “Dickie?”

“Yeah,” she mumbles. “I think so. My head’s all foggy.”

“I know the feeling,” he gentles, helping her sit up and feeding her a few ice chips. “Take it easy.”

“I messed up, huh?”

“We were hoping you would tell us.”

Dick frowns, her brow furrowing. “I remember taking your bike.” She winces a little at the confession, shoots him an assessing look.

“Oh,” Jason says, with promise. “We will get to that.” When she looks a little less like a pale waif, when her skin’s a little more golden and less mottled. When her blood isn’t staining his cuticles. When she’s all healed up, Jason is going to kill her himself.

“That’s all I remember.”

“Normal,” Jason assures her. “Memory loss is a bad concussion’s best friend.”

“B’s not here,” Dick says uneasily. “How mad is he?”

Bruce is in the gym, punishing himself for not yet being able to see and therefore alter the future. “He’s researching convents.”

“Jason,” Dick whines. “That’s not fair. He never threatened you with the seminary.”

“Boo hoo,” Jason mocks. “I never got beat on with a baseball bat by Two Face, either.”

Dick freezes, suddenly pale, fingers clenching in the sheets. Her eyes flutter, rolling back in her head. “I’m gonna--” she manages, and Jason grabs the bowl on the bedside table, getting it under her face just in time.

“Moved wrong?” Jason asks, tucking her hair back behind her ears.

Dick groans, slumping backwards and wiping her arm across her mouth. She cradles an arm around her ribs, wincing and wan. “Remembered some of it,” she says, her voice shredded and hoarse. 

Jason swears at himself. “Sorry.”

“S’okay. Can you, um. Turn the lights down?”

“Course.” Jason leans over, flicking them all the way off. “Bruce’ll be here in a minute.”

“Bruce is here now,” Bruce says, from the doorway. “You’re awake. Good.”

“I’m tired,” Dick tries.

Jason ruffles her hair, standing. “Nice try, Dickiebird. Time to face the music.”

“My head hurts,” Dick says in a tiny voice, her torso swathed in bandages and both eyes blacked, one swollen shut. The other is wide and trembly. 

“Don’t try it,” Jason hears Bruce say, as he leaves. “I’m immune.” He’s totally lying. No one is completely immune; one time Dick asked Selina politely to return a priceless emerald heirloom with nothing but the power of her baby blues, her pouted face, and two tins of fancy feast for Selina’s brood. And it had worked.

Dick sighs. “I’d make a terrible nun, Bruce.”

Jason closes the door almost all the way, leaving it open just a crack. Through it, he can see Bruce looking confused. “What do nuns have to do with anything?”

 

“What’s the damage?” he asks, at dinner four days later. It’s the first meal Dick’s managed to make it downstairs for, and she’s a little too shaky for Jason’s peace of mind.

“Totally grounded,” Dick says with a sigh. “And I can’t tryout for field hockey, I have to do Mathletes. J’onn has to clear me for training himself.”

“Harsh,” Jason sympathizes. “Especially the nerd squad.”

“I know,” Dick groans. “You know who likes girl mathletes, Jay? _Nobody_.”

“What about the boy mathletes?”

Dick looks at him, disgusted. “I’m not losing my virginity to a Mathlete.”

It’s Jason’s turn to groan. “Please stop saying shit like that.”

Dick grins, mood buoyed by the opportunity to torture her big brother. “No, Jay, you’re right. I’m being superficial. I bet there’s some nice guys who can really handle my… differential equations.”

Jason takes advantage of her limited mobility to lick his finger and stick it in her ear while she swears at him. “Instigator,” he accuses, and is so busy laughing at her affronted expression that he fails to block the strike she aims at his throat. He chokes, arms windmilling.

“Don’t slut shame me,” Dick shrieks, half in laughter and half in a warcry. She brandishes a fork weakly at him, trying for menacing but unable to hide the shaking in her muscles from lifting her arm up.

“One meal,” Alfred says, coming into the room with Bruce at his shoulder. “One meal as a civilized household.”

“We’re civilized,” Jason protests, his voice croaky from Dick’s hit. “Bruce made me write a whole paper on Spartan civilization. Don’t be so ethnocentric, Al.”

“No sociology at the dinner table,” Bruce decrees. “Especially since we have a guest.”

Jason makes a disgruntled noise. It’s not one of his friends, or he’d know about it. And he doesn’t like other people in his space. Dick, the extrovert who’s been confined to bedrest, is delighted. “A guest? Is it Clark?”

Bruce scowls at her hopeful, worshipful question. “No.”

Jason stirs, intrigued. “Diana?”

“No.” Jason slumps in disappointment. Bruce’s grumpiness intensifies. “As I was--”

The doorbell rings. In the same second, Wally appears in the doorway. “Heyahiyahellohi,” he says, all in a rush, and darts around the table to throw his arms around Dick. “Are you okay? We’ve been worried.”

“Course,” Dick says with bravado, puffing herself up. “I’ve had worse.”

“You have not,” Jason and Bruce say in unison. 

Dick sticks her tongue out at them. “Can we go to the mountain after?”

“Sure,” Wally says brightly. “Everyone’s missed you.”

“Master Wallace,” Alfred says, arriving with bread and soup and his accent reaching critical levels of British disapproval. “It is customary to wait for someone to answer the door after you’ve knocked.”

Wally winces. “Sorry. I got excited.”

“And no one is going to the mountain,” Bruce says. “You’re still technically on bedrest.” He looks at Wally. “And you’ve got a curfew.”

“They have beds at the mountain,” Dick says stubbornly. “Wally’s curfew isn’t until ten.”

They start to stare each other down. Jason leans back, surreptitiously taking himself out of the line of fire. He uses the opportunity to steal a piece of freshly baked bread from the basket on the table.

“You can’t walk,” Bruce opens with.

“Wally can carry me.”

“Sure,” Wally agrees, like an idiot. If Jason cared, he’d warn Wally he’s just making things worse. “Piggyback.”

“Absolutely not.”

Dick glares. “You can’t keep me locked up. I refuse to memorize the bible. I will not kneel before the Lord!”

“Yeah!” Wally says. Then he blinks. “Wait, what?”

Bruce doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s a near thing. “For the last time, no one wants you to be a nun. Stop being dramatic.”

“Fat chance,” Jason mutters. Dick can’t not be dramatic; she was literally born to perform. 

“Everyone’s missed her,” Wally interjects. “M’gann made a cake.”

“Really?” Dick asks, perking up at the mention of her peers. “Kaldur texted, but I thought he was, you know, doing his leader duty.”

“No way,” Wally says swiftly. “It’s not the same without you. Connor’s like, critically cranky. I think he doesn’t like sleeping alone.”

Jason chokes on a bite of french bread. 

Bruce’s face goes totally flat. “Excuse me?”

Dick pinches Wally’s side hard. “Thanks a lot, Kid Mouth.”

“Oh,” Wally says, wincing as he rubs the back of his head. “Right. The _secret_ bedsharing.”

“Bedsharing,” Bruce repeats. His eyes narrow so far he’s gone squinty. “You’re… bedsharing with Clark’s son.”

“Clone,” Dick corrects helpfully. She smiles at Bruce like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “Problem?”

Bruce stands and leaves. If he’s not headed to the encrypted phone in the study to place a direct call to Superman, Jason’ll eat his cowl. 

There’s an awkward silence. Then Dick punches Wally in the arm. “Anything else you want to spill while you’re here making things more difficult for everyone?”

Jason refuses to be distracted. “Connor, huh?” 

Dick rolls her eyes. “Not like that. He has nightmares, that’s all. It’s the same you used to do for me. And don’t go spreading that around, he’s sensitive about it.”

Wally jerks, staring at Jason. “You cuddle?”

“Stop ruining my rep,” Jason grumbles, doling some soup into a bowl and pushing it across the table. “Eat something before you fall out of your chair.”

Dick’s hand trembles a little around the spoon, which makes Wally’s face go pinched and uncertain. He sits, scooching his chair close. Under the table, their legs are probably pressed together. Dick’s always been touchy, been warm and open and affectionate, more than Jason really enjoys and far more than Bruce knows how to deal with. Jason knows she tones it down around them; it’s not surprising she’d jump at platonic sleeping if someone she was close with welcomed it--wanted it, even. 

And it better be platonic sleeping, or Jason’s going to have to go after that little leadlined box in the basement Bruce doesn’t think he knows about.

“Uncle Barry said,” Wally is whispering to Dick, like Jason isn’t sitting right the fuck there with nobody else to listen to. “He said…” he trails off, looking away. Then he tries to smile. 

Dick winces. She touches Wally’s wrist. “I’m okay, Walls. A little achy.”

Jason’s never seen the West kid so still. “You’re sure?”

Dick’s attempt at a smile is much better than Wally’s. Jason isn’t so dumb as to fall for it, but he’s had more practice and isn’t a total moron. Wally, fooled, sags in relief. “Okay. It really isn’t the same without you. I miss our sleepovers too.” He freezes, then darts a little panicked look Jason’s way. “Our totally clothed, zombie movie based team bonding sleepovers.”

Dick pats Wally’s hand again. “Jason knows I’m saving myself for Linear Algebra.”

“What?”

“Bruce is gonna grunt in Clark’s direction for a while,” Jason muses. “Probably Clark will fly over and they’ll have some kind of brooding bonding moment in the study with the fireplace on or something else embarrassing melodramatic and bromantic.”

Dick looks at him, confused. “Yeah? So? Everyone knows the real fourteen year old girl in this house is Bruce. Even Bruce.”

“So there’s no better time to sneak out through the basement.”

Dick’s confusion morphs into a smirk. “Aiding and abetting, Jaybird?”

“I’m a corrupting influence,” Jason says, grinning. He shoots Wally a look. “Two hours, max. Don’t let her overexert herself.”

Wally tosses him a sarcastic salute, then crouches for Dick to crawl onto his back. He stands, slowly, hands steadying her legs around his narrow hips and her arms looped around his neck. His hand pauses on the inside of her wrist, his fingers against her pulse. Dick leans her cheek into his hair, her nose at his temple, and settles her palm over his heart. They disappear in a whoosh of air and the smell of ozone. 

 

Bruce comes back when Jason is eating his second slice of pie. He takes one look around the empty table and sighs heavily. “Et tu?”

“Beware the Ides, old man,” Jason replies cheerfully, through a mouthful of buttery crust.

“It’s October.”

“They’ll be back before ten.”

“Hm,” Bruce grunts. He steals Jason’s pie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cool. next up, Roy and good old fashioned teenaged angsty pining.
> 
> let me know what you think and I'm on tumblr having comic feelings @ nahekalei


	3. Roy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Dick’s sweet sixteenth, Jason gives her Ursula.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, no beta, and I'm sure I've made typos and other mistakes. I'll fix them as I become aware of them and I apologize!
> 
> New tags this chapter: Jason/Roy, Roy/Dick (very light), pining, light angst, slowburn

For Dick’s sweet sixteenth, Jason gives her Ursula. He wakes her up at the asscrack of dawn for hot chocolate, because he did it on a whim her first birthday at the manor and made it a tradition: pajamas and tiptoeing down the stairs, the click-hiss of the gas stove igniting and letting her add the cocoa powder while he stirs the milk in a saucepan. Too many mini marshmallows and cartoons in the library with the sound turned down low. 

There’s no way Bruce doesn’t know about it, but they pretend it’s a secret anyway. 

“Big day,” he tells her, yawning as he leans against the counter. “Ready for marriage? I bet Bruce could swing a pretty big dowry.”

“Fuck you.”

Jason clutches his heart, pretending to stagger. “On the day of her birth, she curses me? And here I was gonna help West win the right to put a ring on your finger.”

“This finger?” Dick makes a gesture at him.

Jason laughs.

“Bruce couldn’t pay my dowry anyway. I’m not his kid.”

Jason tilts his head, trying to assess how she feels about it. Jason went snooping through Bruce’s desk two weeks ago--he looks regularly, just to make sure Bruce isn’t up to something he thinks Jason can’t handle. Sidekick duties never cease. So he snooped; and he found: adoption papers with Dick’s name on them, just waiting to be filed. “Do you wanna be?”

Dick frowns, sipping at her Superman mug. “I’m too tall,” she says, which is not at all what Jason expects to hear. 

“Huh? You’re legally a midget.”

Dick rolls her eyes. “Don’t be politically incorrect. Or metrically incorrect. I’m too tall to be an acrobat, is what I meant.”

Earlier on patrol she’d used a dumpster as a trampoline to do the full splits in midair and kick two thugs in the head at the same time. While making a pun that dragged the English language into a back alley and beat it down for its lunch money. Or something. Jason hasn’t had enough caffeine for a coherent thought process. “I’m not following.”

“Too big for the act,” Dick says, tapping a finger on the counter. “The Flying Graysons.”

Jason goes still. Dick talks about the circus, talks about performing. But she never talks about her parents. Before today, he’s never heard her say the words _The Flying Graysons_.

“I’m bigger now than my mom ever was. Heavier.” Dick’s never going to be as bulky as Jason is now, at eighteen-nearly-nineteen, but there’s no missing the strength in her body. 

“Don’t tell me you’re counting calories,” Jason says, because he’s an asshole at all times and especially clumsy with his care. “I will hide every scale, young lady.”

“Jerk,” Dick huffs, but she shuffles over and shoves herself into his side. “It’s just what it is. Genetics, you know? I was always going to be built like this. And no one built like this could have done what my parents did.”

“If you wanna--” Jason starts, and he’s not sure how he’ll finish it except if what Dick really wants for her birthday is to rejoin the circus he’ll figure out a way to make it work. If he can’t, Bruce will.

Dick shakes her head. “It’s not that. I’m not sad about it, I…” she trails off, swallowing. “I love being Robin. I really love being Robin.”

Jason smoothes her hair, sleep messy and soft against his fingers. “You love it more than you loved Haly’s.”

Dick flinches. 

“It’s nothing to feel guilty about,” he reassures her quietly. “I get it.”

“You do?”

Jason shifts on his feet, because he doesn’t, not really. He has a few faded good memories of his mom, sitting on the counter while she stirred the pasta and he threw slices of Kraft cheese over it. But it’s all soured, scribbled over with everything that came after. He never liked any of the shitty foster homes he crashed at, didn’t like sleeping under newspapers in abandoned subway tunnels during Gotham’s winters. Bruce was the best thing to happen to him, and he knows it. “No,” he admits. “But I did get you a present.”

Dick tries for a cheerful smile. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Put some shoes on.”

She scampers for the front door.

“And a jacket,” he calls after her. Jesus. When did he turn into Alfred.

 

Dick thinks he’s letting her go out for a birthday ride. Until he hands her the keys and the new registration, made out under her name. “The insurance card’ll come once you get your permit adjusted.”

She gapes at him. Her floppy beat up sneakers and his hoodie dwarfing her shoulders, the bright bright blue of her eyes. Her reverent fingers dancing across the bike he built himself, piece by piece, no one’s hands but his own, not even Bruce’s. “Jay?”

“She’s yours.”

She whoops, going airborne, six feet straight up into the air from flat feet because she can shed gravity just like that, just like a dog shaking the water out. He swoops her out of the air to spin her around. “Can I go now?” she asks, bouncing when he puts her down. “Wally is going to freak. I gotta call Babs.”

“Bruce is gonna freak,” Jason interrupts her, “if you peel away from the house on a motorcycle at four in the morning to a meet a boy.”

“Yeah,” Dick agrees, looking up at him through her lashes. Her smile goes sly, her tongue peeking out between her teeth. “Bruce _would_ freak.”

“You’re a menace,” Jason says with a sigh. “And you owe me.”

She presses a kiss to his cheek, chapped lips against the straggly scruff of his cheek. “You’re the best,” she says, and roars out of the garage. She takes Jason’s helmet; his blue looks good on her. 

 

“I thought you wanted me to be nice to her,” Jason says sweetly, when he goes in for breakfast and Bruce is staring stony-faced at Dick’s empty chair. “‘The joy of siblings’, you said to me, Bruce. ‘Think of it as a partnership,’ you said.”

“Partnership in turning me grey,” Bruce mutters, and snaps open his newspaper. “Tell her to be back by dinner. Alfred is making something special.”

“Tell her yourself.”

“I wouldn’t want to come between your _partnership_.”

Jason snorts. He shovels a piece of bacon into his mouth and chews obnoxiously loud. Behind the paper, Bruce sighs. “Hey,” Jason says, swallowing, suddenly serious. “Hey, B?”

Bruce lowers the paper expectantly.

“You know those papers, with Dickie’s name on ‘em, in the third drawer in your desk? The one upstairs?”

“The papers in the drawer with the fingerprint and retinal scanners?”

“Yeah, those,” Jason says, without shame. Bruce is the one who taught him how to crack locks, he can’t get pissy about it now Jason’s old enough to decide on his own which ones he wants to open. “Don’t give them to her tonight.”

Bruce sets the paper aside and gives Jason his full and undivided attention. It’s not unlike looking directly into the sun: uncomfortable, ill-advised. Dangerous after a few seconds. “They would be unwelcome?”

Jason frowns at his plate. He doesn’t think they’d be unwelcome, exactly, just… “Not this year.”

Bruce regards him for another few seconds, then nods once. He pours Jason some orange juice. “I hear you’re writing a paper on Romeo and Juliet. Alfred said it was sensational.”

Jason blushes. The assholes at the prep school Bruce made him go to turned up their noses at his Gotham University acceptance letter. Bruce had made disgruntled noises about the Ivy Leagues until Jason had broken down and screamed at him that he doesn’t need Bruce’s pity pay off, that he knows he can’t hack it at the collegiate level without doing a two year junior college transfer and living at home like a fucking loser, but he’s gonna fucking _try_. Bruce had gone quiet for two days, then shown up to pick Jason up for lunch in a Gotham Community College hoodie.

“He’s just being nice after I asked him to proofread. Nothing a kid graduating a semester late could write would be sensational.”

“I disagree,” Bruce says simply. “I haven’t read the play in some time; since Dick will be gone today, why don’t we go to the library and you can argue your case?”

Jason hides his smile in a bite of eggs. “Sure, if you got nothin’ better to do.”

“I don’t,” Bruce says, and it hits Jason just like hot chocolate at midnight, warmth all the way down his chest to his belly.

 

Jason’s lounging on the front steps in the sunshine with a book when he hears the roar of the motorcycle. Dick shrieks to a braked stop just in front of the edge of the grass, leaving dark skidmarks in her path. “Really testing out those tires, huh?”

Dick swings off the bike, a flushed redhead in a bicycle helmet clinging to her back. “Hey Jason.”

“Babs,” he greets. “Dickie show you a good time?”

Barbara tosses her hair. “A girl could get used to that rumble between her legs.”

Jason fake retches. “Gross, you’re like ten.”

“I’m older than Dick,” she reminds him.

“You’re wearing a princess butterfly helmet.”

She yanks it off, trying to smooth her hair. “We didn’t want to risk trying to buy a real helmet, since Dick’s not technically supposed to drive other people.” She frowns slightly. “Is your permit even classed for a bike?”

“That’s what I picked you up for,” Dick teases. “Get me out of tickets.”

Barbara hits Dick in the gut with the helmet, making her _oof_. “Really? I thought you picked me up to distract Jason from asking why you’re wearing Wally’s shirt.”

Dick pulls a face at her. Jason’s eyes snap to the fabric showing underneath her hoodie. The red fabric under _his_ hoodie. “You’re what now?”

“The other one got dirty,” Dick says with a shrug. “Wally didn’t mind.”

Jason frowns. “Why couldn’t you borrow something of Iris’s?”

“They weren’t home, and this was the only shirt on his floor that didn’t smell weird.”

“Why were you in his room when no one was home? How did your shirt get dirty?”

“Jason,” Dick says, gently. “It’s okay.” She steps close, touching his crossed arms over his chest. “We were extra careful, he went really slowly.”

Jason’s vision almost blacks out, he’s feeling so lightheaded. Bruce is going to skin him alive. He’s going to have to kill Wally, and then Barry is going to run him to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and leave him for the sharks. Then he sees the smile playing around Dick’s lips. “You little--”

She dodges his first grab for her, cackling as he pivots to pursue her across the front lawn. He feints left and she falls for it, darting right into his tackle. “We used _two_ condoms,” she crows, pulling herself up to beat him around the ears while he digs his knuckles into a cluster of nerves on the outside of her thigh. “We--ow, shit!” She wobbles, her leg abruptly gone numb, then kicks him in the hip.

They topple over into the grass, tussling. “Babs!” Jason yells, “Bros before hoes, get in here and help me beat up this liar!”

“No, Babs,” Dick shrieks, turning to try and bite Jason’s hand while he gets her in a wrestling hold. “Remember the sisterhood!”

“You’re a menace,” Jason grunts, rolling to avoid a sudden assault to his ribcage. “A bony elbowed--”

Barbara dumps her waterbottle over them, which does very little to slow anything down. They sputter to a halt only after noticing the extra shadow beside her. 

Bruce regards them with something close to resignation. 

Jason releases Dick from a half Nelson. Dick tries to adjust her clothing so the Flash symbol on her t-shirt isn’t visible, the collar of the hoodie ripped all the way down her chest. “She started it,” Jason offers.

“All of you,” Bruce says, “get off my lawn.”

++

Bruce catches Jason in the hallway, using his shirt to dry his hair. “You could have invited Roy, if you wanted.”

“I’m not a kid, Bruce. You don’t have to arrange a playdate so I don’t feel unloved on Dickie’s special day.”

Bruce is undeterred. “Roy hasn’t been by in a while.”

“He refused my promise ring. I had a June reception planned and everything.”

They reach Jason’s room; Bruce lingers outside while Jason digs into a drawer for a fresh shirt. Jason smooths the fabric down his chest. “You need something, B?”

“Do you?”

Bruce’s help comes in two flavors, but the one he struggles most with is directly. Jason pats him on the shoulder for positive reinforcement. “We’re hitting the boardwalk later.”

Bruce nods. He produces a small box from within his pocket. “It was for Dick,” he says, extending it to Jason. “I didn’t realize you’d part with Ursula.”

Jason shrugs, trying to downplay it. “Squirt needed something to make her cool. Mathlete Captain is not good social currency.”

He opens the box: a key. Then he reads the lettering and his breath catches. “You got Dickie a _convertible_?” He frowns suddenly. “Hey, wait a minute. You got me books for my sixteenth.”

Bruce’s left eyebrow rises. “First editions.”

“A convertible,” Jason says pointedly. Then he brightens. “Holy shit, I have a sports car. Can I--”

“After your sister’s dinner,” Bruce agrees. “And I better not get any calls from Gotham PD.”

“Sure,” Jason says easily. “No problem.” As soon as Bruce goes to change he ducks out the window and makes for the garage, texting Roy with his free hand.

++

Jason picks Roy up from the bus station out in the ‘burbs. Roy whoops in appreciation, taking a minute to slow walk around the hood of the car. Jason leans back in the driver’s seat, legs spread, shades down. He revs the engine. “Hot shit,” Roy agrees, sliding into the passenger seat. “You gonna let me show her how a real man drives?”

“Fuck you,” Jason says cheerfully. “Wanna hear my baby purr?”

“Oh Jay,” Roy says, smirking in the passenger seat. He touches Jason’s knee, faux-coquettish, and flutters his eyelashes. Jason’s stomach dips. “Lemme hear you _scream_.”

Jason puts the top down. They rip down the freeway at ninety miles an hour, the wind numbing their faces and the radio turned all the way up.

 

They swing through a fast food place, stop once in a while for a scenic outlook to receive admiration and envious coveting from passerby. Pull into a truck stop for gas and smokes and more junk food. And Jason… god, if Jason could live in these few hours forever, the click snap of the lighter in Roy’s cupped hands, Roy’s fingers on the radio tuner. Katy fucking Perry on the pop station radio and his mother dead in the ground, he’s Bruce Wayne’s charity case and he’s got scars on his knuckles that can’t fade away. He’s never been this happy.

 

Jason cuts the engine on an outlook, high up on the edge of a mountain, Gotham spread out below them, and leans his chair back to sprawl out just a little bit more. He closes his eyes with a quiet sigh.

Roy fiddles with the radio, flipping between stations and finally leaving it on static, little bursts of music breaking through every few seconds before fading away again. “Are you going to tell me why you’re pissed at me?”

Jason opens his eyes. “What?”

Roy shrugs, rolling a joint. “You really gonna try to lie to me?”

Jason frowns down at his lap. “You tried to hide that you’ve been drinking again.”

Roy’s hands still, then resume, tucking the paper around and around. “It’s under control.” 

Jason scoffs, looking out at the view. Gotham blazes at night, around the edges. The rest darkens as you get closer to the center, the docks. The Narrows isn’t lit up at all, and even from up here he can make out the stripe of Crime Alley, crooked and splashed with cheap neon. “Please,” he says suddenly, and his voice doesn’t crack, exactly, but there’s something naked about it. He remembers their truce on a rooftop, years past. “Please don’t. Not tonight.”

Roy’s jaw clenches in his peripheral vision. “I’m sorry,” he says, and it’s not what Jason expected. “I get why you don’t want to hang around me anymore. Since I’m not on the team anymore, and since I… you know. I get it, that’s all.” He exhales, carefully balances the joint on the dashboard. “Ollie threw me out.”

“What?” Jason jerks around to look at him properly.

Roy shrugs. “He took it back, a few days later. This was last week, I’m back at his place now.”

“Where’d you crash?”

Roy shrugs again, tapping his knuckles on the door. “Around. I’m setting up my own digs, anyway.”

“You could have called me.”

“Could I?” Roy’s voice is deceptively mild. “Thought maybe you’d lost my number.”

Jason flinches. “That’s. That’s not what it’s about.”

“Sure,” Roy says, his voice gone hard. He exhales, sharp, and shakes his head. “No, you’re right. Not tonight.” He tries for a smile. “One last joyride, right Batlad?”

“Sure thing, Robin Hood.”

They sit in silence, the night growing colder. “I got drunk,” Roy admits. “I messed up, I--” he stops, throat working, then exhales through his nose. “He wasn’t wrong, to toss me out.”

“He was,” Jason says immediately. 

Roy waves a vague hand. “Kept trying to talk to me, point out all the mistakes I’ve made and the mess my life is. No job, no real skills, no future. Offered to buy me a diploma if I’d go square.”

Jason winces. He can’t think of a worse tactic to get Roy to sober up. All the reminders of what he’s done and the insinuation he can’t pass the GED on his own; nothing would send him to the bottle to forget faster. “Are you?”

Roy flips the joint up and catches it on the tip of his finger, balancing it. Archer’s fingers, rough and dextrous at the same time. Soft between the calluses and the faintest of tanlines where he wears his guards. Jason only knows they’re there because he’s spent so very long looking. “You know me, Jayce.” He lights it, white ash sprinkling down into the footwell, and slips the cylinder between his lips. The cherry flares when he inhales, long and deep all the way down his chest, the hollowing of his cheeks. 

Jason’s breath catches. He makes himself look away. “I do,” he says, the pause too long. “I do know you.” He knows Roy doesn’t feel the same way, he knows it would change everything. Ruin everything, just like every purely selfish desperate want he’s ever had. 

Roy takes another hit and passes. “Here.”

“Thanks,” Jason mutters, “Bruce’ll kill me,” he muses, because it’s what he always says.

“Ollie won’t notice,” Roy says, because it’s what he always says back.

They’re both lying: Bruce will frown and shake his head and make Jason read articles about formation of the brain and unknown effects and possible side effects; Oliver will pretend not to notice because he doesn’t know how to deal with it. They’re lies, but they’re comfortable lies. 

Jason feels the high hit smooth and heady, his mouth gone dry and his thoughts cloudy. They pass the joint back and forth, fingers brushing. “It’s my fault,” he says, because he’s high and he’s worried if he drops Roy off at the bus station without an explanation Roy won’t pick up the next time he calls. “It’s not you.”

Roy snickers. “Are you dumping me?”

“No, I…” Jason shakes his head. From far away, he can hear his own voice telling him not to do this, to swallow it down and keep it hidden, forever and ever. But he’s high and time’s gone the way of taffy, dragging and stretched out and getting slower by the second and before he can stop himself he’s saying: “I thought it’d be easier, to not be around you, you know? Like going cold turkey. Burn it out and then it’d be gone.”

Roy looks at him so long an ember falls on his knee, making him jolt. “What?”

“Didn’t work,” Jason says with a sigh, rescuing the joint from Roy’s surprised, lax grip. “Made it worse.” He takes a hit, tries for a smirk. “Just missed you worse, that’s all it did. Didn’t fix a goddamn thing about me.”

Roy’s mouth opens and closes. His eyes are wide and shocked and his hair’s grown too long, a wavy red lock escaping his hat to curl across his forehead. “Jason?”

Jason shakes his head, looks away. In his head, Willis Todd calls him a faggot. “Forget it, Harper. I’m just high.” He flicks the headlights back on. He usually waits to drive, when he smokes, but he’s itchy under his skin and he knows he’s going to feel like shit when he sobers up, which he’d rather be alone for. “Let’s get outta here before we pass out.”

Roy touches his wrist, stopping him from turning the key in the ignition. “What do you mean, it didn’t work?”

Jason shakes his head again.

Roy tightens his grip, all the strength in his fingers against the fine bones in Jason’s wrist and Jason’s watched him draw that bow back a hundred times, a million times, doesn’t matter. Takes his breath away just the same. “Tell me what you meant.”

“Bruce handed me the keys,” Jason says, his breath coming in short. “And I couldn’t wait for dinner, not even for Dickie’s birthday. Couldn’t tell anybody else, couldn’t think about nobody else. Went runnin’ straight to you.” He looks up. “That’s what I mean.”

“I,” Roy says. His eyebrows are drawn together, he’s breathing through his nose. “I’m not… Jayce, you know I--”

Jason flips his hand over, dislodging Roy’s grip to slide their palms together. It’s almost like a handshake, almost like they’re holding hands. “I know. Just. Thought you should know why I disappeared on you.” He drops Roy’s hand. “And I get if you want to disappear on me for a while.”

He stares at the window, huddled up into himself. Waiting for the sound of the car door opening and closing, the crunch of Roy’s boots on the dirt. “Hey,” is what he hears instead, and turns to look.

“Remember,” Roy says, holding up the very last bit of the joint to his lips. He inhales one last time, long and hard, and then just parts his lips and let the smoke tip out, curling and thick and wisping up into the dark starry night. Flicks the roach out the window into the dark. “Remember that I’m a fuck up and an asshole and we only get along so well because we’re both so fucking bad at our own feelings.”

“Okay,” Jason says. He doesn’t know what Roy’s leading up to but he doesn’t really care, not when the whole world has narrowed down to the touch of Roy’s fingers on his knee and the sound of the leather as Roy pulls himself up and leans over the space between their seats. 

Roy cups his jaw, holding him, and his face is so close Jason can see where he missed shaving that morning. Jason licks his lips and Roy watches the movement. Then he leans in and they’re kissing. 

The angle is weird, and the moonlight is dim through the clouds, casting odd shadows against their skin. Neither of them close their eyes or open their mouths, but Jason can taste it: the weed and the smokes and the french fry grease. And he can taste him, Roy, warm and quiet and giving him this because he knows he can’t give Jason anything more. 

Roy settles back onto his haunches. “Was--are we… okay?”

Jason licks his lips again, a nervous darting movement. “Yeah.” He feels flushed, too hot all the way down his collar and sweat prickling along his spine. “I, uh. I like girls too, you know?”

Roy smiles, slow and then faster, and then they’re just grinning at each other, mussed hair and the windows fogged. Roy’s grin morphs into a smirk. “Yeah, I know. You gonna let me drive your new squeeze, or do I gotta get on my knees?”

Jason laughs, his head tipped all the way back, his shoulders shaking. He drops Roy at the nearest zeta location and Roy leaves with a sock to his shoulder a promise of still hitting the boardwalk later, and then Jason goes to the backroads and open the engines all the way up, until the car rattles and he fishtails on the turns. He’s got a grin he can’t shake, a lightness in his chest. He’s so full, he thinks, he’s so goddamn clean. Burned out the doubt and the fear and all that’s left is the nicotine on his fingers and the tingle on his lips.

Eighteen years old and on top of the world; he’s gonna live forever.

++

Jason crawls in Dick’s window, smelling like weed and cigarettes. Dick wakes when his feet touch the floor. “Jay?”

“Hey birthday girl,” he whispers. “You still mad?”

“You missed my special dinner,” Dick says, scowling. “Bruce said you promised to come and then you just ditched.”

“I never promised to come,” Jason corrects. “I wouldn’t break a promise to you.”

Dick shrugs, looking away. “Whatever. I’m a big girl, I don’t need you around to pay attention to me.”

“Cool,” Jason says. “So we’re square.” He makes like he means to walk out her door.

Dick flings herself at his back, wrapping her limbs around him. “No! You didn’t spend any time at all with me today! You picked Roy over me!”

Jason staggers under her sudden arrival and the weight of her, so much bigger than she was when she was twelve years old and just discovering that she can use Bruce and Jason as her personal jungle gym. Her arms have found their way around his throat and he’s not unconvinced she’s trying to choke him out. “I got up at four in the morning to give you a motorcycle,” he wheezes, clawing at her arms.

“I require constant attention,” Dick insists. Her grip tightens. “I must be the center of the universe or the laws of physics will nullify, Jason. Do you want to be responsible for that? For the collapse of gravity--”

Jason reaches back over his own shoulder, grabbing a fistful of the back of her t-shirt, and lifts her up over his head to slam her back down onto the bed. She bounces, still pouting, and kicks him in the leg. “Batboy.”

“Girl Blunder,” he shoots back, then flops onto the mattress beside her. “Are you really mad?”

Dick shrugs. “Not really. You gave me Ursula, and Babs was here. Plus Bruce is genuinely pissed and you smell like weed, so it’s not like you’re not gonna suffer.” She punches him lightly but repeatedly in the ribs until he rolls over to cuddle her. The new position reveals something on the wall he hadn’t noticed before: a poster, faded at the corners and in a fancy frame. A poster with her dead parents on it. 

Jason’s breath catches. Her family’s names, her family’s colors. He’d never seen them, just the designs that Alfred allowed to come to fruition, that only just took the Graysons as inspiration. Dick is watching him look, her face inscrutable. “It’s amazing,” he says finally, and she smiles. 

“I’d forgotten about these, until I saw it. Bruce said he’s been trying to track one down since I got here, but they’re so rare it took him a few years.”

“Wait,” Jason says. “Bruce got you that?”

“Yeah. I mean he got a me a few other things, too, you know how he is. But one big thing, like usual.”

One big thing, like usual. Like how the Joker will take a permanent tropical sabbatical before Batman would fail to notice Jason adjusting the seat on Ursula for someone with shorter legs. The other flavor of Bruce’s help: careful manipulation. Jason would rather eat his own shoe than accept a gift like a luxury car, something so shiny nobody born where Jason was born should ever touch it, no one with hands that have done what Jason’s hands have done. Jason sighs, easing back into the bed. Bruce got him, fair and square; he knew Jason could never give it up once he felt the roar of that engine under his hands.

(Never give it up because there’s that memory in it: a kiss that tastes like stolen cigarettes and cheap vodka, Roy’s careful fingers on his jaw, his quiet eyes. The way Roy said his name and all Jason could smell was the leather of the seats and Roy’s aftershave. He’ll never hear that song on the radio the same way, not ever again for as long as he lives.)

“He also got me a calculator,” Dick is musing, oblivious. “I think he was trying to make a dad joke.” She scowls. “I’m still mad at you.”

Jason digs in his jacket pocket, fishing out an envelope. “Roy says Happy Birthday.”

Dick snorts. “Roy hasn’t seen me since I was thirteen years old. There’s no way he knows it’s my birthday.”

Roy hasn’t seen Dickie in years because Roy left Young Justice with a stomp and a _fuck you_ ; Roy hasn’t seen Dickie in years because Roy’s got one solution to every problem and it’s to look at it again through the bottom of a bottle. But tonight he wasn’t drunk. Jason didn’t taste anything at all in his kiss except himself. “Well,” he teases, “since you feel that way, if you don’t want his present, then--”

Dick hits Jason’s elbow in a nerve strike and snatches the envelope from his abruptly numb fingers. She rips the envelope to pieces to get at the small card inside. “Holy shit.”

Jason gets his first good look at it. “Oh no,” he starts, lunging for it. “No way.”

“Already gave it to me,” Dick crows gleefully, rolling over and tucking the fake driver’s license under her body for protection. “No take backs.”

“Mature,” he says, straddling her to sit on the small of her back. “Hand it over or I’ll suffocate you with your own blankets. He shoves her face into the mattress, ignoring her muffled shriek of rage and the kicking of her feet. 

“--stop--” she’s saying, when he releases a little. He shoves her face back down, laughing, his weight shifting on her back, his hand in her hair and tugging.

She contorts in a way that should not be physically possible, Jason could swear she’s got a skeleton made entirely of cartilage and joints of silly putty, and bites his forearm. He yelps in pain. “Circus brat,” he mutters, falling back and holding up his hand to assess the damage. “You drew blood!”

“You deserve it,” she snaps, sitting up all disheveled and flushed and pissy. “Get out of my room.”

“Aw Dickie, c’mon. I didn’t mean it like that.” They’ve always wrestled like that, dirty and mean and a little rougher than they should. It’s never bothered her before. “Keep your fake, okay? Just doing my big brother duty.”

“I’m on only child,” Dick snaps, and plants her foot on his side before shoving him off the bed. Jason tumbles to his feet, shaking his head. 

“Hey,” he objects, as she manhandles him to the door and physically kicks him out of her room. “It says you’re eighteen you know,” he says. “The picture barely looks like you. Don’t go trying to drink with that!”

Dick tells him to go fuck the tigers, for all she cares. Jason thinks that what it was, anyway. He’s never bothered to really learn Rom and he thinks Dick’s forgotten a lot of it, but once in a while when she’s really pissed something comes through. Jason figures it’s shit her parents used to say, and her parents worked in a circus and apparently weren’t shy about cursing around their bundle of joy. He barely jerks back in time to save the door slamming into his nose. 

“Girls,” Jason mutters. She’ll be over it by the morning. He ambles down the hallway to his room and doesn’t even kick off his shoes before he flops facedown into the bed, hiding his smile in the duvet. Roy Harper kissed him in the moonlight, Roy Harper knows the only thing he’s never told anybody else in the whole goddamn world and it didn’t change the way Roy thinks about him at all. 

Jason couldn’t have planned a better night if he’d paid Klarion to make him his own dimension.

++

Dick is not over it by morning. She instigates at breakfast, to the point where Bruce has to stop ripping Jason a new one for driving high to send her to her room. She stomps out and Bruce fixes Jason with yet another disapproving glare.

“Don’t look at me,” Jason says, reaching over to grab Dick’s bowl of cereal. It’s almost entirely marshmallows and he pulls a face, switching it for his own bowl of oatmeal. “Everything was fine yesterday.” He catches a flicker of movement in the doorway. “Maybe she’s on her period,” he says, and drops out of his chair to the floor just in time to dodge two forks and butterknife whipping his way. They hit the back of his chair hard enough to stick into the wood and stay. 

Jason peeks over the edge of the table. “Hey!”

Bruce has retreated behind his newspaper. “You deserved that. Go downstairs if you’re going to continue.”

Jason looks at Dick. “Spar?”

“No,” she snaps, and storms away. 

Bruce lowers his newspaper, looking up to the ceiling thoughtfully. After a few seconds, Dick’s bedroom door slams hard enough a little bit of dust falls into his mug. He looks at his ruined coffee. He looks at Jason.

“I’m going to go think about what I’ve done,” Jason says hastily, almost tripping over his own feet. “And practice just saying no to drugs.”

He takes the stairs at a jog before Bruce can ground him and take his brand new car keys away, but doesn’t pause in front of Dick’s door. He goes to his own room instead, out the balcony and along the rooftop. He taps on her window. 

A book bounces off the glass from the other side. Jason taps again, more insistent. 

“Fuck off!”

Jason elbows the window hard enough to break the glass, then climbs in, his boots crunching on the shards. “Oops. My arm slipped.”

Dick glowers at him from where she’s perched atop of a bookshelf. “You’re cleaning that up.”

Jason shrugs. Five minutes with Alfred’s special shopvac, it’s hardly a life sentence of manual labor. “You gonna come down so we can talk like adults?”

“I’m sixteen, and you just broke my window.”

“You gonna come down so we can fight like maladjusted teeangers?”

Dick’s lips twitch, like she wants to smile. Then she launches herself at him; even in her growth spurt she’s fast and graceful, she’s never had the period Jason did (the period he’s still in) where he trips over his own limbs and is more gangle than muscle, a puppy tripping over his own big paws. 

Jason moves to catch her; at the last minute she twists, her legs around his thighs as she knocks him off his feet onto her bed. They bounce against the mattress, and she sits up as he groans, looking pleased to have knocked the breath out of him. “Does this mean I’m forgiven,” he grumbles. 

“No.” She touches his jacket. “This is new.”

“It’s not. I’ve had it for over a year.”

“Not your style.” She tilts her head at him, her weight up on his hips. Smooths her hands down the leather collar and lapels, her voice gone low and slow and soft. “Actually... it’s absolutely your style.”

“I’m glad you approve.”

She frowns, more of an absent downturn of her lips than an expression of disapproval at him specifically. “Jay--”

“It’s Roy’s,” Jason says. “He gave it to me after…” he falters, swallowing. “After the thing with Two Face.”

Dick’s face closes down. She’s off him and across the room before he can blink. “Go away. I’m still mad.”

Jason sits up, feeling off footed and unsure, dragging his fingers through his hair to try and settle himself. “Dickie, c’mon. I’ll make pancakes, we’ll patrol together. Without B. It’ll be fun.”

“I’m not patrolling,” she says, without turning to look at him. “I’m going out with Babs, some girls from school.”

Jason’s eyes narrow. “Going out where? There’s no under eighteen clubs open on a weekday.”

Dick turns, her smile too sweet to be anything but cutting. “Bowling.”

Jason growls. “If you think--”

“If _you_ think,” she interrupts, then stops herself with a scowl. “Don’t pretend you’re the good son. You still smell like weed.”

“I do not,” Jason mutters. He’s showered, changed clothes, showered again. But her point stands. “You’ll be careful? Buddy system, and all that?”

Some of the fight bleeds away from her posture. “Yeah, I promise. You know I can take care of myself.”

“I worry, you know. Big brother privilege.”

The corner of her mouth twists. “Big brother privilege,” she echoes, and turns to look at the framed poster on the wall, her mother’s smile. 

There’s something here that Jason hasn’t grasped, can’t understand. It’s almost frightening, because he knows they’re talking on two different planes but he can only see one of them and it feels like he’s losing something in his ignorance. “Dickie?”

“I’m an only child,” she murmurs, echoing herself and their old joke. “I was an only child.” She shakes herself. “I gotta get ready.” She checks the time. “So do you.”

Jason’s got at least two hours before Bruce will expect him to be down in the cave. “Yeah. Pancakes after?” She’ll probably be a little tipsy, need some carbs in her to smooth the impending headache. And there will be a headache, in Jason’s experience. Bruce prefers to wait until the hangover’s hit to start his special brand of punitive consequences. And… it’s familiar. He wants that, suddenly, wants to pretend she’s two feet shorter than him and her bangs get in her eyes and she genuinely believes he could do absolutely anything.

“Sure,” Dick says. She’s looking at the top of her dresser now, the pictures on the wall. Her and Wally, her and the Young Justice team, her and Babs, Donna and Kory on either side of her the day they pierced her ears. 

Jason hesitates, right in the doorway, takes one last look back: she’s holding a framed picture of last Christmas, when Bruce took them snowboarding out in Colorado. Her and Jason on the side of a mountain, grinning, arms around each other and their goggles too big on their faces.

++

Bruce almost smiles when Jason tells him Dick is going out. “Seriously?” Jason grumps at him, arms folded across his uniform. “When I turned sixteen and ditched patrol on my birthday you suspended me from Young Justice for three months.”

“You were not suspended for ‘ditching’ patrol. You were suspended for trying to steal my car.”

Jason clasps his hands in front of his chest. “But you said joyriding was an acceptable teenage rebellion. And it was Roy’s idea.”

“I meant the Aston Martin, not the Batmobile. And I was wrong about the Aston Martin.”

It’s easy to forget just how young Bruce was when he took Jason in. “You should be more specific,” Jason shoots back. It’s a comment he’s heard a hundred times from Bruce. “And I don’t know why you think _Dickie_ is gonna be more responsible. Dick, the kid who was jumping off tall platforms with no nets for fun starting at age six. The kid who broke into Cadmus just as a middle finger to the League and came out of it with a new boyfriend. The girl who hacked into College Board and changed all the answers on the SAT to spell out--”

“She did _what_?”

“What?” Jason asks, busying himself with his domino. “I didn’t say anything.”

 

It’s a good patrol, with a few good scraps and truly hilarious moment where Bruce nearly slips on an actual banana peel and Jason is so focused on not laughing at him that he almost gets stabbed by one of Ivy’s thorny vines.

“You got me,” she sighs, when she’s been restrained and sedated. Her voice is loopy with it. “Back to Arkham, huh?”

“Yeah,” Jason tells her, not entirely unsympathetic. She hadn’t tried to toss any kind of pollen at him at all this time, and the banana thing was incredible, so he’s feeling pretty mellow about the whole thing. “But we sent Harley back last month.”

Ivy brightens, despite being halfway to unconsciousness. “You did!”

“Bluejay,” Batman says gruffly. “We’re leaving.”

Jason drapes his cape around Ivy’s shoulders. “What?” he says, when Batman is giving him a Look. “It’s cold. And I’ve been thinking about ditching the cape anyway.”

Batman grunts. They grapple away to a rooftop to wait for the police to come and clean up. In his ear, Jason’s communicator chimes softly. He holds up a hand to signal Batman, and lets the call through. “A?”

“A certain redhead requests a moment of your time.”

“Red Arrow?”

“Female redhead,” Alfred clarifies.

Jason looks at Batman. “She’s with Robin.”

Batman touches his ear, joining the call. “Let it through.”

Barbara’s voice sounds tinny; there’s muted music playing in the background, muffled. Like she’s in a club bathroom. “Jason?”

“What’s wrong?”

“We may have… lost Dickie.”

“ _Excuse_ me?”

“It’s never happened before,” Barbara frets. “And I know she can take care of herself, you know, the downstairs thing.”

Jason winces. He can feel Bruce’s stare boring into his side. “B’s on this call.”

“Oh. My dad says thanks for taking care of that freeze ray thing last week!”

Bruce closes his eyes under his cowl. 

“She was just acting a little bit weird tonight. I’m worried.”

“I’ll check on her,” Jason promises.

“Okay, good.” Barbara sounds relieved. “I’ll get everyone else home safe.”

“Thank you,” Batman gravels out, “for calling. You’re a good friend.” He drops off the roof without another word, headed for the car. 

“He’s never talked to me before,” Barbara says, and she sounds a little breathless under the concern. “You’ll make sure he goes easy on her?”

Jason swoops down to the street, landing with quiet feet. “Are you serious? I’m going to tell him to send her to a convent.”

“He can send her to a convent,” Barbara agrees, her voice gone low and dangerous. “ _After_ I kill her slowly.”

“Thought you two were just a few inseams short of a yaya pants sisterhood.”

“I’m thinking hamstring,” Barbara continues, like he hasn’t spoken. “Or the achilles. Something painful and limiting. No flips and no climbing until she’s learned her lesson.”

She doesn’t sound overly worried, which means Dick wasn’t trashed when she split. Which means Dick split on purpose and is up to something. Annoying and still worrying, but not fullblown panic inducing. Jason slides into the passenger seat. “Is this a good time to say you were always my favourite, Red?”

“Seeya around, BJ,” she says, and hangs up.

Jason pulls a face. “You couldn’t have warned me about the initials when I picked my name?”

Batman is elbow deep in projected a computer screen, his fingers flying across the holographic interface. “You were so proud of it. I didn’t want to burst your bubble.”

More like he thought it’d be more funny this way, Jason thinks, but he’s got more important things to focus on. “How are you tracking her?” Is she seriously still carrying her phone?” Jason frowns. If she still has her phone she’s either drunker than he’s figuring, or she’s expecting them to come after her. 

“She took a zeta,” Batman says, which is an explanation in itself. “To Star City. Her phone’s still broadcasting.”

“You go,” Jason offers, and feels Batman’s attention shift onto him. He winces; it’s a tell, not to demand he go alone or accompany Batman. “We had a fight,” he confesses. “Or… something. I’m not sure what it was. Plus she’s expecting me. If it’s you she might not cause more trouble.”

Batman frowns. “The League of Shadows is in Gotham tonight,” he says, and Jason stiffens.

“What?!”

“I was going to send you home early. Talia wants to meet.”

Jason scowls. “I’m an adult now,” he reminds him. “We’re partners.”

“I would have debriefed you,” Batman says. It’s not so much an olive branch as a recitation of facts. “And had you watch the recording. I value your insight.”

Jason grumbles a little, swayed but not mollified. “Fine. I’ll go to Star, you go flirt with the apple of Ra’s’s eye.”

“We don’t flirt.”

Jason rolls his eyes. “Sure. And you used to go around Selina’s to ‘help feed her cats’.” He makes finger quotes with his fingers, then raps on the dashboard. “Fine. Drop me at a zeta, old man, and don’t forget to glove that love. Can you imagine what kind of demon would be birthed from those loins?”

“Gloving hasn’t save me from either of my other children,” Bruce mutters, but the engine roars under them. “If you need backup, contact me immediately.”

“And insult Talia? She’ll kill us both.”

Batman’s frown intensifies. “You’re more important,” he grunts, but nods. “Call Green Arrow. He’ll help, if you need it. Contact me as soon as you find her--I might not be able to respond, but I want to know.”

“I’m sure it’s just teenage rebellion,” Jason offers, trying to comfort them both. “Star isn’t Gotham, anyway, how bad could it be?” He winces. It’s never a good idea to encourage Bruce’s imagination to run amok. He’s excellent at picturing exactly how bad it can be. “I’ll bring her back,” he corrects. “You pick a convent.”

“I couldn’t do that to the church,” Batman deadpans, and Jason laughs.

++

The zeta drops him in the sewers near a ditch and Jason crawls out into a rainy alleyway with a curse, brushing something unidentifiable off his chest with a grimace. He brings up his tracker, the current location of Dick’s phone blinking away. He calls Roy.

Roy doesn’t pick up, but that isn’t unusual. “It’s me,” he grunts to the voicemail box. “I’m headed to the old park and I might need some backup; I’ll explain in person. Call me.” He pulls on a windbreaker, tucking his domino into the pocket, and slips out into the streets, keeping his collar up and his head down. 

It’s about a fifteen minute walk to the old park, long since closed, but Jason books it, making it in less than eight. The park overlooks the water, an ugly silhouette of rusted metal and garish colors against the otherwise pretty backdrop of the ocean and starry skies. There’s a homeless encampment near the entrance, where the structures have stayed intact enough to provide shelter. Jason skirts it, headed towards the chainlink fencing along the waterfront. The beach itself is smallish, dotted with old cigarettes and beer bottles; it’s a popular place for the young people of Star City to get stupid at night. 

It’s too rainy for a bonfire, and too cold for much else: there are a few groups of people sitting in the sand or huddled up under the old bus stops, but no one notices Jason slipping through one of the many holes snipped into the fencing. He sticks to the shadows and keeps his eyes peeled, his ears pricked. And his hand in his pocket on the tracker, feeling it buzz as he gets closer and closer. He ducks over a rotted through overhang too check the screen and course correct--her location is somewhere near the old food court. 

Some of the carts are still there, like when the park went under employees just dropped what they were holding and walked away. The hot dog sign is faded but visible under the cracked plastic. Jason goes into the building through the open doorway, the door itself long lost, and pauses to take stock of the room. It’s big--one of those massive inside food courts where the restaurants open up with big stainless steel shields that roll up and down. Even soft stepping, his feet stir the dust laid thick on the floor, sending tiny tufts up into the air.

He calls Roy again, no answer. Mutters a little curse, because what the fuck, Roy knows this place way better than Jason does. Roy loves this place. But just there--other trails of disturbed dust. He follows them. They track across the room in circles, meandering and fresh. Jason thinks it’s more than one person he’s tracking, and it makes him frown. 

And there, against the cracked and rotted remnants of the row of soda machines. A single batarang, dropped carelessly onto the floor. And a scrap of red fabric.

Jason picks it up, turning it over in his hands, bigger than he thought it was at first sight, something raw and hollow opening up in his chest. He’d know it anywhere. It’s Roy’s stupid fucking Robin Hood hat, the one he used to stick an honest to god feather in, back when they ran around in tights and pretended they were their mentors and Roy called himself Speedy without any irony at all. 

++

Jason vaults the fence at Oliver’s mansion--tacky, Bruce called it with a sneer, which is so hilariously old money of him that it had made Jason laugh. He’s not laughing now. He hammers on the front door so hard his fist hurts. “Open up!” he bellows. “This isn’t funny!”

The door opens and he very nearly slams his entire fist into Oliver’s chest. Oliver blinks at him. “Jason?”

“Where is he?” Jason shoves past him. “He thinks it’s funny, to just--how could he not call me!” He storms into the dining room, hangs a right and kicks open the door to Oliver’s office. “Idiot! Where are they?”

“Who’s they?” Oliver grabs his leg before he can kick down another door. “Hey! Quit it, batbrat.”

Jason yanks out of his grip with a vicious snarl. “Dick! She’s drunk and alone and he couldn’t drop me a text or pick up my call? He thinks it’s funny? Batman’s out alone with the League and he thinks now’s a good time to play stupid fucking pranks?”

Oliver blinks. “Dick’s here?”

Jason makes a inarticulate noise of rage and stomps for the stairs. “Left him without backup,” he says to himself, scowling. “Batman almost left the League running around Gotham, and she’s been, what? Sitting on your couch playing video games right under your nose?”

“I just got home,” Oliver protests, following him. “And what do you mean, the League’s in Gotham, no one’s called me--”

“The League of Shadows,” Jason snaps. He turns down the hallway, headed to the last door. “You--” he snarls, but then he’s flung the door open and all the words have left him in a woosh, leaving him feeling dizzy.

Because Roy’s there, on his bed, disheveled and wide-eyed, his mouth slack. 

Dick’s in his lap.

“Jason?” Roy asks stupidly. He licks his lips (his lips, soft and chapped at the same time and he did the same thing right after they kissed, his hand warm on Jason’s knee and his hair curling into his eyes in just the same way) and blinks. His eyes are slightly unfocused. 

“You’ve been drinking,” Oliver says furiously, but it’s lost in the dull roar of Jason’s ears. 

Dick’s shirt is pulled down, her collar stretched. There’s glitter on the front of it and her skirt is hiked up, Roy’s hand on the back of her thigh. “Jason,” she says, but it comes out uncertain, her shit-eating smirk fading into something confused as she takes in his expression. “Jay?”

Jason laughs. It cracks in the middle, hollow and harsh. Dick flinches.

Roy blinks. He stares at Dick with new focus; dawning horror. “ _Dickie_?”

“Oh god,” Oliver is hissing. “Oh god you unbelievable fuckup, that’s Batman’s daughter! Batman’s fifteen year old daughter!”

Roy recoils, shoving Dick out of his lap onto the bed. “Fifteen?!?”

“Sixteen,” Dick mutters, straightening her clothes. “Not that you asked.”

“You were drinking!”

“So were you!”

Jason laughs again, completely without mirth. “God,” he says, low and vicious. “I’m such a fucking idiot.”

Roy’s head whips around. “Jay,” he says, reaching out a hand. Pleading. “I didn’t--” 

Jason punches him. He doesn’t pull it and Roy doesn’t try to dodge, taking it hard on the side of his face, knocking him to the floor. Oliver grabs the back of his jacket, but he doesn’t move to strike again. 

“Jason!” Dick cries out, scrambling up to her feet. “Don’t--”

“You don’t,” he cries out, whirling on her. He feels nauseous. “Don’t fucking talk to me!” 

“Jason,” Roy tries, placating, and Jason’s hands clench again. He wants to break Roy’s face wide open and put his fist through that pretty mouth (swollen, a hickey starting to bruise on Dick’s collarbone), through the window. Wants to feel bones break and glass shatter until everything matches how his insides feel.

“You were laughing at me,” he says, low and broken. “Mocking me without the balls to do it to my face.”

“No,” Roy says immediately. “No, Jason, please, I didn’t, I _wouldn’t_.”

“You’re the only one I told,” Jason says, the truth cracked out of him. “You…” he shakes his head. He can hear his father’s voice, louder and triumphant. That mean laugh of his when he made Jason flinch. “I trusted you. I won’t make the same mistake again.”

He turns, shoving at Oliver to let him pass. “Get her to Gotham. I’m going…” he falters. _To Roy’s_ , he’d almost said, muscle memory. “I’m going.”

“Jayce,” Dick says, her voice tiny and her eyes big, huddled up into herself. He can’t bear to face her. 

It’s not her fault, he tries to tell himself. There’s no way she knew, she’s just a kid and he loves her and--. And she picked Roy, out of everyone in the whole wide world, five billion people. She chose Roy. “I can’t even look at you,” he says, and no one tries again to stop him as he leaves.

++

He goes home. His first home, an alleycat slinking back to old haunts. Through the Narrows, the crooked street signs with all the reflective paint long since stripped away and the shivering girls on the street corners. He must look in a way, if they don’t call out to him. Or he must look like he belongs there, like you can take him to Bristol and enrol him in Gotham Prep and replace _Todd_ with _Wayne_ but it won’t ever matter because the stink of Crime Alley is bone deep and doesn’t ever fade away. 

He keeps his hands shoved in his pockets and his head down and wanders, almost in a daze. He’s so caught up in it, in the misery and the heartsick and the way Dick’s probably crying right now with no one’s shoulder but Oliver’s, which is a pretty terrible fate, that he doesn’t notice the shadows following him from the rooftops. 

_Stupid_ , he thinks, when he looks up to find a katana headed straight for him. One kiss and one fight and everything Batman spent years drilling into his head fell out his ears and now he’s scrapping with ninjas in the dark three blocks from where he woke up one morning and found his mother dead on the kitchen floor because he dropped the ball, he didn’t check on her, he didn’t find the stash, he didn’t calculate her dosage for her because she can’t hold numbers in her head when she’s dopesick. 

He manages a few lucky hits but he’s scrambling and can’t get his composure together, can’t find his discipline. Can’t get centered, can’t land a takedown, can’t get the communicator out of where he shoved it in his pocket. 

In the rain, asphalt on his cheek and blood on his tongue. 

In an alley, next to a dumpster, and he can’t help but smile, a crazed snarl of a grin, so hard his cheeks hurt with it. 

Talia’s boot on the back of his neck, grinding his face into the muck. “I almost thought we would have to return for you, that my Beloved sensed our plans and sent you away.”

Jason laughs. It grits out, graveled and broken and not sounding very much like a laugh at all. He can almost see the moon behind the clouds. 

“If it makes you feel better,” Talia offers, her tone flat and disinterested. “My father looked into the spider’s web of universes, and all your threads had a center. It was always going to end like this.”

Jason closes his eyes. He doesn’t need demon mysticism to know that. Every kid born south of the fourth ward knows it, is born knowing it and has the truth hammered into them with every crooked cop’s baton and the empty high school chairs and the full prison cells. 

No one makes it out of the Narrows alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is a bit angsty, right? I hope it didn't feel purple or over the top, I just feel like he's at the right age and the whole coming-out-coming-to-terms and then first crush teeanged heartbreak thing is enough to get anyone emo, eh?
> 
> this chapter came quick on the heels of the others, which were also published pretty quickly, but there's going to be a gap for the next one. I'm grappling with some things and making changes and it's just coming a bit slower. Please be patient if you're enjoying!
> 
> Also I can't say this enough and I know it isn't new or unique or anything, but comments really help encourage me. This is very different from things I've done before and my first in the fandom and it's easy to feel discouraged. Not that it's on you to keep me motivated or anything, I just want everyone who takes the time to comment to know it really helps! I'm especially anxious about this chapter, because it underwent major changes and I think is tonally different from the others?
> 
> particularly anxious about the roy/dick thing because it makes perfect sense in my head, you know, that dick's jealous and didn't realize jason felt /like that/ and roy is at this point an addict and theyre all young people making terrible and stupid decisions, which is the beauty of being young people, and I tried to write in hints and stuff but I'm not sure it's enough for readers to buy what I'm selling. Constructive feedback is welcome :)
> 
> let me know what you think and i'm on tumblr @ nahekalei


	4. deleted scenes: linear algebra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a smattering of loose scenes, mostly between Dick and Wally. Jason does not appear in this and the entire chapter can be skipped if that's not your jam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to write this long chapter with some birdflash virginity stuff (spoiler: this didn't even happen) and grief stuff and like, halfway through I just wasn't feeling it. I don't think it holds together very well and I couldn't get the vibe I wanted and I was getting more and more frustrated and it was impeding my progress on getting to the stuff I wanted to write about Jason's return.
> 
> So I decided I can do what I want and I'll just do a time jump, but I had several thousand words of this so it's here if anyone's interested. It's even more loosely proofread than anything before!
> 
> But you can skip this chapter and not miss anything crucial for understanding the next one.

“Wally,” someone is saying. “Wally!”

Wally sits up. “Hhuh? Wha’ time izzit?” He blinks. “Uncle Barry?”

His Aunt Iris raises an eyebrow. “Do I look like Uncle Barry?”

Wally rubs at his eyes, yawning. “It’s Saturday, Aunt Iris. No school, no spandex.” He fishes his phone out from under his pillow and checks the time, checks to see if Dick’s texted him. He’d been expecting her to reach out last week, on her birthday. Usually when she goes out without him she calls him the next morning, whining about how she’s dying and she absolutely needs him to bring her Belly Burger grease to chase the hangover away. Just like the past three days: no new notifications. The time is almost noon.

“Wally,” Iris says quietly, “this is important, okay? Are you awake?”

Wally’s stretches. His stomach rumbles. Iris hands him a protein bar, one of the ones he and Barry eat when they need something dense with calories. Iris hates them, and only allows them to eat them in cases of emergencies. _Growing boys need real food_ , she’s proclaimed, on more than one occasion. Wally crinkles the wrapper between his fingers, worrying the edges instead of ripping it open. “What’s wrong?”

Iris falters. “I--after you eat, okay?”

That means she thinks he’ll be too upset to eat afterwards, that means that what she needs to tell him is really bad. 

“Wally,” Iris says, “you’re buzzing.”

“Is it Uncle Barry? No, because you wouldn’t be here, you’d be--Is it--” Wally bursts into motion, running out of the room, out of the house.

He’s home in less than a second. “Mom! Dad?”

His mother pokes her head out of the kitchen. “Wally? You’re back early. Do you want me to make you some lunch?”

Wally doesn’t answer, zipping through the house before rejoining her in the kitchen. “Where’s Dad?”

His mother rolls her eyes, sitting back down at the dining table with a cup of coffee. “Golfing. Can you believe it? The whole world of hobbies he can pick from, and what does he choose? The most--”

“Thanks mom,” Wally interrupts, bending to kiss her cheek. “I’ll be back tomorrow, okay? No missions, I promise.”

He’s gone before she can respond.

 

Iris is waiting, foot tapping on the ground. He meets her gaze sheepishly and then sits hard on the bed, little silver floaties dotting his vision. She hands him the protein bar and he rips into it, hardly chewing as he forces it down. Slowly, the panic fades. It leaves something quieter in its place, something sick and awful. “It is bad,” he ventures quietly, “isn’t it?”

Iris sits next to him. Hesitantly, she puts her hand on his back. “This Young Justice thing,” she murmurs. “I don’t know how your parents do it.”

Wally tenses under her touch, no matter how gentle. “Just tell me.”

“Barry’s with the League,” Iris says softly, and Wally can always feel time ticking away, the excruciating slowness of each second. For the first time, he’s desperate to slow it down more, stretch it out like taffy until it snaps. “Bluejay is dead.”

++

Dick doesn’t really laugh anymore. 

“What?” 

“I said, Dick doesn’t laugh anymore.”

Artemis frowns at him. “Well… yeah, Wally. It’s only been a few months.”

Wally scowls at his burger, his appetite gone. “I know. But it’s--it’s not like her, that’s all.”

Artemis’s silence is faintly judgmental. “She lost a family member, Wally. And not in a ‘grandma went gently in her sleep’ way, either. She’s going to be acting differently. That kind of thing changes someone.”

Wally’s scowl intensifies. He pushes the plastic food court tray away, across the table, and shreds a paper napkin into pieces. It’s not Artemis’s fault she doesn’t know, he reminds himself. That explanation makes perfect sense to her. But Wally’s known Dick a long time. Jason’s not the first family she’s lost, he’s not even the second or the third. And Dick laughs when she’s happy and she laughs when she’s furious and she laughs when she’s sad, too. You gotta pay attention to pick out the sad ones from the others but Wally’s been paying attention and he hasn’t heard a single giggle.

Wally’s known Dick a long time. With Jason gone, Wally’s known Dick the longest. Wally’s breath hitches, unsteady. “He didn’t like me,” he says suddenly, without looking up from the tabletop. “So why am I…”

Artemis, after a pause, touches the back of his hand. “Hey,” she says. “Quit that face, will you? It makes you look even dumber than usual.”

Wally shrugs. He swallows hard.

“I’ll talk to her,” Artemis promises. “If nothing else, I can keep her sparring long enough she’s too tired to do whatever terrible thing she’s planning to do.” Wally’s head jerks up, meeting her eyes. “Yeah, she’s not that subtle. We’ll make sure she doesn’t get herself--” Artemis stops short. She leans back in her chair, her fingers slipping away from Wally’s wrist. “You know.”

“Yeah,” Wally says. “Thanks.”

“We can handle her,” Artemis says confidently. “And… she’ll laugh again. Eventually.”

Wally steals Artemis’s chicken sandwich and dodges her retaliatory kick to his shins. “Thanks Artie. Seal the deal with a kiss?”

He brings his hands up, to block his face from her drink. She throws it at his crotch instead.

++

The funeral was… 

Quiet. 

 

Wally sat on his hands, to keep them still. It’s more of a service than a funeral, held at a secret location and kept quiet from the world at large. Some people are in black suits with no masks, some in uniform but no masks, some in jeans and t-shirts and masks. It’s an eyesore of a mismatch, and it isn’t that crowded. Bluejay wasn’t a full League member, and besides missions with the senior Young Justice team, the Bats of Gotham keep mostly to Gotham. 

Dick is kitted out in full Robin gear, including her hood. Her shoulders are ramrod straight and her eyes inscrutable in the shadow of her hood and hidden by the white of her mask. She sits with Bluejay’s team instead of her own, flanked on either side by Kory and Donna. Kory weeps openly, but it works for her, Wally thinks. Doesn’t look overwrought or fake or hysterical, just a honest showing of grief for losing someone she loved. 

Donna’s face might as well be carved from stone. Her arm is around Dick’s shoulders. 

 

Wally is so sweaty and twitchy during the speeches that Uncle Barry drags him outside and tells him to run around for ten minutes, then sit in the back and wait for the reception to start. 

Wally nods, looking at the ground. “Sorry.”

Barry hesitates, then touches Wally’s shoulder. They’re both of them out of uniform. “It’s… it’s okay, kid. You can’t help how you react to this stuff, you just get used to it.”

Wally frowns. “I don’t want to get used to it.”

Barry is looking at the flagpole in front of the boring beige square building they’re holding the service in. Purposefully nondescript and there’s a fountain bubbling out in front. “No one does.”

Wally wonders, suddenly, how many of these Barry has been to. He takes off, running until his shoes smolder, until the world blurs, until he’s too breathless to ask. 

 

M’gann’s voice whispers through his mind: _Robin did not make her speech_.

Wally screeches to a stop atop the Great Wall. He turns around. _I’m coming_. 

Wally finds his team huddled into a corner. Kaldur hands him a tray of tiny sandwiches as soon as he appears and Wally eats three in one bite. “Where’s she?” he mumbles, around cucumber and some kind of garlic spread. 

Conner’s gaze goes a little unfocused. Then it sharpens. “Back garden,” he reports. “M’gann?”

M’gann frowns. “I… I think Wally should go.”

Like Wally not going was ever in the cards. “Did someone… someone did a speech, though, right?”

“Wonder Woman,” Kaldur says, not unaffected. “It was a fine eulogy.”

“It was okay,” Artemis mutters. She surreptitiously wipes at her eyes with the edge of her sleeve. “She only made one semi-passive-aggressive comment about child soldiers.”

“She always liked him,” Wally offers. “They, uh.” He stops. It doesn’t really feel like it matters, and it’s not his to say, anyway. “She always liked him.”

Kaldur clasps his shoulder and Wally twitches. First Barry, now Kaldur. He steps back, disengaging the touch. “We will be here,” Kaldur says, dropping his hand back to his side. “If you should need us.”

 

The garden is hidden by ugly olive concrete and grey chainlink fencing. Wally finds the gate, letting himself in and forcing himself to slow down, to walk. The garden itself is okay, kind of boring. Mostly neatly trimmed grass, a smattering of large rocks, a tiny man-made stream. Benches dot the grass and a few large trees provide dappled shade. 

Dick is nowhere to be seen, so Wally picks out the biggest tree and starts to scale it, the bark rough on the palms of his hands. The branches are dense at the center and he grimaces, flicking a beetle off his wrist before pushing himself out onto the highest branch.

Robin is perched at the apex, legs dangling. She’s watching him approach. “Did Diana…?”

“Yeah,” Wally says, scootching along the branch on his butt and trying not to look down. 

“Good. He would have liked that.”

“Right,” Wally says, now less than a foot away. He’s straddling the branch, gripping white knuckled at it. “He… wouldn’t have liked you to do it?”

Robin blinks. Then she pulls her hood down, takes her mask off. Dick looks at him, barefaced. “Why do you say that?”

“I’m guessing,” Wally admits. “Also, I think I might be afraid of heights.”

Dick’s lips twitch. “We’ve jumped out of airplanes, Walls.”

“At least we were moving.” Wally pulls a face. “It’s the heights plus being still that’s freaking me out.”

“Oh? You want to move?” Dick’s feet draw up under her; her thighs tense. 

“Dick! Don’t!”

Dick bounces, shaking the tree branch. Wally squawks. 

“Is this better?”

“I’ll kill you,” Wally threatens. Dick bounces the branch, harder, and Wally blanches. “I’ll throw up on you!”

“Okay,” Dick relents, settling back down into a sitting position. “Since you said uncle and all.”

Wally never said any such thing, but he lets it go. “Conner saw you,” he says, even though Dick hadn’t asked. “Said you were in here.”

Dick doesn’t acknowledge the comment. “I didn’t even write it,” she mutters, picking a leaf off a branch and twirling it between two fingers. “Not a single word.” She throws it aside and rips another leaf away, more violently. “Couldn’t say his name, couldn’t write it.”

“How come?”

Dick keeps twirling. “It’s not right,” she says, but not like she’s answering his question, like she’s got something to say and will keep going in fits and starts until she’s done. “It’s not--he wasn’t-- _I’m_ not even, not anymore. It shouldn’t matter!”

“Okay,” Wally says, because he’s never really been able to keep himself from talking. He doesn’t know what to say. He’d googled it, earlier, sitting on his bed. The internet told him to be patient, to bring food, to send prayers. He’d asked Barry in the car if Batman had ever let slip a religious affiliation and his uncle had smiled, ruffled his hair, and given no helpful information. “It’s okay,” he says, even though it isn’t true. 

“There’s,” Dick says, after a long silence. “There’s a code, right? Like Batman’s code, except Batman’s code is in English, and this one is a little,” she stumbles over her words, frowning. “Faded. You know?”

Wally has never known less. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Yeah,” Dick says, brightening. “I knew you’d--” she looks at him, his awkward flinching guilty face. “Oh.”

“Okay, so I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Wally admits, sliding closer. “But if you need to say it, if you _want_ to say it, I’ll listen.”

Dick is quiet. Then she smiles. It’s small, but it’s real. “You’re a good friend, Wally.”

“You’re my best friend. And if I fall out of this tree and die, I’m going to haunt your ass.”

“Of course you would,” Dick says softly, wiggling close enough to lean her head on his shoulder, their chests touching. Her legs dangle next to his, her toes hooking over his ankles. “It’s a great ass.”

Her hair tickles his nose. “Do you want me to call Conner?”

“No.” 

A frisson of satisfaction shoots through him. He shoves it down. Then he frowns. “Uh… Batman isn’t gonna get mad at us for skipping out, right?”

Dick is silent for long enough that Wally pictures a number of terrifying outcomes. Then she says, so quiet he almost can’t catch it: “He’s not here.”

Wally brings his arms up, precarious balance be damned. His thighs flex, then burn with the effort. He pulls Dick close and she buries her head in his chest, his nose against her neck. It’s not comfortable, not their perch or their position or how small she feels against him. “I love you,” Wally says, because he doesn’t--he’s never had a brother, really, and he never liked Jason that much and he doesn’t know exactly what went down that night but he knows Dick doesn’t laugh anymore and no one’s seen Roy in a month and he woke up last week and Uncle Barry was watching him sleep, which made him scream and then his scream made Uncle Barry scream and then Aunt Iris burst into the room screaming with a baseball bat and the neighbors called the cops because of all the screaming-- “I love you,” he’s still saying, babbling. “Dickie, I--”

She shushes him, fingers through his hair. “I know,” she says softly. “I love you too.”

++

Dick has one of Artemis’s training bows. An old one, beat up and taped back together. They all know their way--some more roughly than others--around a bow, just in case they need to use one in the field. But they don’t generally train on the bow, not after learning the basics and doing the bare minimum of skill upkeep.

Dick’s been target shooting with Artemis’s old training bow for two hours. Over and over, a steady rhythm of arrows striking the target. 

Artemis steps up to Wally’s special treadmill. “Flip a coin?”

“Can’t we guilt Kaldur into it?”

“He’s in Atlantis. Conner and M’gann are on a date.”

Wally doesn’t try to hide his grimace. “Let her train. She’s benched from missions, it’ll help her blow off steam.”

“I can hear you.”

Wally winces. “You wanna spar, Rob?”

“No.” She keeps it up, one arrow after another. “If you two have something to say, say it.”

“Let’s take a water break,” Wally suggests. 

“Take whatever break you want.”

Artemis shrugs. “Let her wear herself out,” she says, not bothering to pitch her voice low. “If she wants to pass out, it’s another six weeks on her benching.”

Wally elbows her. “That’s not helpful,” he hisses.

“Not having Robin in the field isn’t helpful,” Artemis says. 

Dick drops the quiver from her back, going into a roll. She comes up, her body arching as she spins. The bow hits the mannequin so hard it cracks, falling to the ground in pieces. Dick stands, breathing hard. Her hood has fallen around her shoulders. 

Wally stops the treadmill, stepping off and opening his mouth. “Wally,” Artemis says, before he can get started. “It’s time for some girl talk.”

Wally looks between them, hesitant. Artemis is wrapping her knuckles. “Dick?”

“You heard her,” Dick says, her smile slow but wide under her domino. Dick smiles most in two moods: delighted and furious. “Girl talk.”

Artemis is grinning right back, that feral edge she gets just before she fires an exploding arrow at someone’s face. “No boys allowed.”

Wally goes to the kitchen. If M’gann can bake her stress away, maybe he can too.

 

Dick stumbles into the kitchen almost two hours later, hair down in waves from her combat braids and wet from the shower. She has a black eye and a half-split lip. “Hey.”

Wally tutts at her, flitting to the freezer and returning to her side before she’s done sitting down on a stool. He presses the icepack to her face. 

“Cold,” Dick complains, slumping down onto the counter. “What’re you doin’?”

“Baking,” Wally says, balancing the ice on her face before going to the oven to check on his cookies. 

“Really?”

“Sort of.” Wally frowns inside the oven before shutting the door with a sigh. “Everything takes so _long_.”

“It’s not the hobby I would pick for you,” Dick agrees. “Is there chocolate in the cookies?”

Dammit. Wally knew he’d forgotten something important. “They’re sugar cookies.”

Dick snickers at him. “Kid Chopped.”

“Are you feeling better?” Wally gets her a bottle of water out of the fridge. “After ‘girl talk’?”

Dick arches her back, swinging her arms behind her farther than anyone should be able to. A series of cracks pop up her spine and she sighs, holding the stretch for a few seconds before releasing. “Yeah.”

“Gonna take up the bow?”

“No.” Dick wiggles around until she’s half flopped onto Wally’s shoulder. “You know you’re my one and only, right Walls?”

“Sure,” Wally says, tense under her weight. “That’s why you need girl talk. Because we’re so close.”

Dick rolls her eyes. “Don’t be like that. Artemis--is a friend, of course. But she’s not you.”

“She’s really pretty,” Wally mumbles, then blushes. “Good. At archery. She’s pretty good at archery.”

“Ooh,” Dick teases, holding the ice away from her face so she can grin mischievously at him. “Ooooh??”

“No,” Wally denies, “No--”

Dick jumps from the counter onto his back, and it’s not fair because Wally could totally dodge her but she always jumps just so, just so that if he doesn’t catch her she’ll fall into something sharp or pointy or onto the stove. “Evil gremlin,” he grumbles, catching her in a bridal carry. 

Dick bats her eyelashes at him. “Oh Wallace, what will our guardians say?”

“That you’re a menace,” Wally retorts, then flinches. Jason had always called her that. 

Dick’s expression flickers. Then she sighs, and leans her head into his shoulder. “I’m tired, Wally.”

“I know,” Wally says. “C’mon. You can tell me how bad my cookies are and we can watch the Food Network.”

 

The cookies are terrible. Dick eats six and falls asleep nestled against his chest, legs tucked up beneath her. 

++

Wally makes a list. It’s what Dinah told him to do when he fretted about his usefulness to the team, his clumsiness and the tenuous connection he has to all the powers that come so easily to his uncle. 

Robin likes fighting and hacking and pulling pranks that make Kaldur sigh.

Dick likes fighting and hacking and making Bruce’s eye twitch.

Robin likes motorcycles and patrolling Gotham and Bluejay--

Dick likes motorcycles and Jason--

Wally crumples the paper up and throws it at the wall. Lists are stupid.

 

He corners Artemis in the kitchen in the middle of the night. “Has she said what it is?”

Artemis blinks at him around a spoon in her mouth. An open pint of ice cream is in one hand. “Huh?”

“What she’s planning,” Wally demands. “You said you were going to find out.”

Artemis takes the spoon out of her mouth. “I said we’d find out. As in, eventually.”

“That’s not good enough.”

Artemis glares. “Listen, Dorkus, it’s two in the morning, I don’t have time for Kid Meltdown.”

Wally glares. “Fine. I’ll do it myself.” He knocks his shoulder against hers on the way out.

 

The door to Dick’s room opens at his knock. “Wally,” she greets, stepping back. “Something wrong?”

“Yes,” he says, because it’s true. 

Dick’s face furrows, concerned. She grabs his wrist and tugs him inside her room, closing the door behind her. She’s in pajamas, a pair of sunglasses crooked on her nose. “What is it?

“I don’t know.”

Dick’s worry fades to confusion. “What?”

Wally breathes. In through his nose, out through his mouth. “Take me with you.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Take me with you, or I’ll--I’ll tell Batman on you.”

Dick makes an offended noise. “Snitch!”

“Only if you make me!”

“Oh my god, Wally.” Dick sits on her bed. When Wally doesn’t move Dick makes an exasperated noise, standing and grabbing Wally by the arm. She yanks him down to the bed with her and tosses her sunglasses away. “What are you even talking about?”

Wally stabs a finger in the ar at her. “Don’t try to distract me. I know you. I know you when you’re up to something.”

“I’m always up to something.”

“You’re always up to something,” Wally agrees. “But I’m usually up to it with you.”

Dick frowns, picking at her sheets with her fingernails. “This is different.”

“You don’t laugh anymore,” Wally blurts. “It’s been months.”

Dick’s expression closes. “It’s late. You should go.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Wally says, wincing. “That’s--it came out wrong, I just--”

“Get out of my room,” she hisses, “or I’ll make you.”

Wally stumbles out, still protesting. “Dick!” He thumps his fist against the closed door. “C’mon, Dick. You know what I meant.”

Silence answers him. Wally groans, thunking his forehead against the wall. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Wally says, trying to keep his voice cheery. “Okay?”

Dick refuses to acknowledge him. Wally sighs. 

++

Dick’s training routines are getting longer and longer. Until her muscles tremble, until she wobbles during her cool down and collapses into bed before she even showers. 

Wally comes out of the locker room, ruffling his hair with a towel, and makes eye contact with Artemis on the treadmill. He raises an eyebrow.

She shrugs.

Wally pulls a face at her. 

Artemis rolls her eyes.

“Dick,” Conner says directly, from where Wally hadn’t noticed him entering the room. “What’s wrong with you?”

Artemis’s eyes go wide and she almost falls off her treadmill. Wally makes a desperate slashing motion at him, which Conner clearly sees and just as clearly disregards. 

Dick blinks. “What? Nothing.”

Conner crosses his arms over his chest. “Liar.”

Dick’s face sets.

“I’m out,” Artemis says, and flees the scene. Coward.

Wally sighs. He steels himself like he’s headed into battle. “Conner’s right.”

Conner’s eyes flick to him, inscrutable. “I’m always right.”

“Rarely,” Wally snipes back. Conner’s jaw flexes. 

“Ookay,” Dick says, slinging a towel over her shoulder. “I think you guys can carry that on without me.”

Conner moves in front of her, blocking her from moving. “I found your files.”

Wally frowns. “Your what?”

“You went into my room?” Dick’s hand rises, the bow clutched tight in her grip. She’s scowling.

Conner looks puzzled. “Of course I did. I had to. You kept them in lead boxes.”

Dick makes an infuriated noise. “You had no right.”

Wally darts close, appearing at Dick’s shoulder and grabbing it hard. “What. Files.”

Dick shakes him off, not looking away from Conner. “This doesn't concern you, Wally. Get lost.”

Wally’s jaw sets. “Fine. I will.”

There’s something in his tone that makes Dick stop, and really look at him. Her eyes widen. “Don’t you--”

Wally’s in her room before she can finish her sentence. He tears it apart. Clothes fall to the floor, followed by sheets. He flips the mattress over, then starts emptying drawers onto it two at a time. 

“Wally!” Dick shouts, panting from her sprint from the gym to her room. “Stop it!”

“You can stop it,” he snaps, dodging her attempt at a takedown and yanking the rod from her closet. Hangers clatter to the floor, extra uniforms and spare civilian clothes. “Just tell me where they are.”

Conner slaps his hands together, arms straight out. The resulting gust of wind knocks Wally back into a wall. “I have them,” he says, before Wally can retaliate. He holds up a small stack of manila folders. “Here--”

Wally snatches them, retreating to a safe distance. He ruffles through them, reading at superspeed, papers fluttering ot the floor as he discards them. Dick makes an annoyed noise. “Those were organized.”

“Shut up, Dick,” Wally snaps. Then he sits down on the floor where he stands. Hard. He lands on a shoe and it hurts. 

“Crap,” Dick mutters, and digs into one of the pouches of her utility belt, slung over one shoulder. “Here.”

It’s one of his protein bars. He rips it open with his teeth and tears into it. By the time he’s finished, he’s feeling less shaky. 

Dick offers him another. 

“No, I’m okay.” He stands, looking around at the destruction he wrought. “Uh… sorry?”

Dick shrugs. “Needed a clean anyway.”

Conner picks up an eye searingly ugly yellow polyester denim jacket and rips it in half. “Oops.”

Dick gapes at him. Then she rolls her eyes and sits on the bed, patting the mattress beside her. “Huddle up, boys.”

Conner sits on the floor, picking up the pages Wally had dropped. Wally drags himself up to the bed and lays his head in his hands. “I’m toast,” he moans. “Batman’s gonna kill me and then Uncle Barry will die trying to avenge me and Aunt Iris will--”

“Stop whining,” Dick says, patting his back. “I’m planning. I’m a good planner.”

Wally sits up straight, flailing. “Are you serious? You’re going to go after the Joker. The _Joker_!”

“What does Batman say?” Conner asks. 

“He won’t even let me in the Cave while he’s working on it. And that’s all the time.” Dick scowls at the carpet. “S’why I’ve been staying here.”

Wally picks up one of the glossy crime scene photos on the floor. An alleyway, puddles too dark and thick to be water, green dripping paint: _Ha hA hA hA HA_ slashed in neon across the bricks. “He hasn’t… done anything? To gloat?”

“No,” Dick says, scowl intensifying. “It’s not like him. But he always--he had a thing, about Bluejay. Hated him even more than Batman sometimes, I think.”

“This is exactly why Batman asked me--” Two sets of eyes fix on Wally and he stops abruptly. “Um. What? What was I saying? Who was… saying…?”

Dick grabs his elbow before he can escape. “Fess up,” she snaps. “Traitor.”

Wally jerks away, his own temper fraying. “Traitor? _Traitor?_ Keeping you alive is treason now, huh? Caring about you, what an asshole I am!” He stands, pacing. “And this? This is crazy. The Joker. The _Joker_!”

“It’s not fair,” Dick says lowly. “It’s not fair that he’s still breathing and Jay is gone.”

“If you figure out where he’s hiding,” Conner says, standing. “Then we will go. As a team.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll call the entire League down on you.” Conner leaves without another word.

Dick sticks her tongue out at his back. “As if the entire League cares about what I’m upto.”

Wally flops facefirst into her pillow. “Toast,” he groans. “Toast.”

He feels the bed shift as she lays out next to him, poking his ear. “Don’t be a baby. Is it really so surprising, what I was planning?”

“No,” Wally admits. “I’m… kind of relieved, actually. That you weren’t doing anything was worse.”

“I’m sorry,” Dick says suddenly. “I’m sorry I’ve been so…” She shrugs. “I don’t get it either, if that helps any.”

“Have,” Wally asks hesitantly, “or, um. Has Bruce…?”

Dick looks away, her teeth sinking into her lip. “I don’t want to talk about Bruce.”

They sit in silence for a moment. “I made a list,” Wally says. “Of stuff you like. To try and cheer you up.”

Dick is smiling, even if it is a little sad. “Kid Sap. Let me see it.”

Wally sighs. “You’re gonna make fun of me,” he grumbles, but he fishes out the crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and hands it over. 

Dick reads it, smoothing the paper between her palms. Her finger rests under Jason’s name. “I like more stuff than this,” she says, trying for a joke. “Where’s the Crocky Crunch?”

“Ah. How could I forget? Your DNA is 42% sugar cereal.”

“Crocky Crunch,” Dick reiterates. “I’m brand loyal.”

“What else? Just so I have an accurate list.”

Dick produces a pen from the bedside table, crawling across Wally’s chest to reach it. She turns, flopping against his side and staying half atop him. _Kroky Kronch_ she writes, because she know the spelling will make Wally twitch. _Manly spooning_ she adds, underneath.

Wally props his chin on her shoulder. “What makes it manly?”

“Your participation. I’m babying your fragile boy ego. Enjoy it while it lasts, because when I’m done with puberty I’m expecting you to be my best ally.”

“Noted.” Wally points at the paper. “I don’t see ‘make my friends worry’ on there.”

Dick elbows him. “I don’t enjoy that, it’s just a byproduct.”

Wally makes a subsection. _Byproducts_.

Dick laughs. It’s not as joyous as usual, not as bright. Not a cackle echoing out of the shadows, either, but Wally will take it. He takes the paper out of her hands and sets it aside. “Wanna be the big spoon?” She offers.

“Pfft. Everyone knows little spoon is where it’s at.”

They flop around like they’re kids at a sleepover again, poking at each other and tussling until Wally is under the blanket and Dick is curled up around his back, her mouth against his neck and her leg hitched up over his hip. They snuggle close and listen to the quiet sounds of the mountain around them.

“Dickie,” Wally murmurs, into the dark. “Are you awake?”

Dick’s breathing is even, her grip on his wrist loose with sleep. “I really miss him,” she whispers, her voice thick. “I really…” her voice cracks. “Wally, I--”

Wally doesn’t turn around, his muscles aching with the tension needed to stay still. “I know,” he says, curling his fingers to stroke the inside of her wrist, over and over while she shakes against his back, fights every sob with her whole body and loses every time. If he doesn’t see it, it isn’t really happening. “I know.”

++

Dick makes a joke in training. It’s at Artemis’s expense and she throws her entire bow at Dick’s face over it, but she smiles after, unable to keep the scowl going. “Better, right?” she says to Wally, afterwards.

Wally frowns, watching Dick stretch on the mats. “Yeah. I guess.”

 

“Uncle Barry,” Wally asks at dinner, voice hesitant. “Um. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, kid.” Barry tears his eyes away from the platter of roast chicken at the center of the table to give Wally his full attention, although he does hold out his plate hopefully to Iris. “What’s bugging you?”

Wally drags his fork through his potatoes. “You said you’d, uh. Been to other memorial services before.”

Barry puts his plate down with a thunk, his eyes gone serious. “I did.”

“Did you need to--I mean, were any of them…?” Wally trails off, looking at his uncle hopefully. “You know?”

“Uh,” Barry says. He looks at Iris. 

“Honey,” Aunt Iris says, “has Robin been struggling?”

Wally shrugs, dropping his fork entirely and morosely picking at his napkin. “No. She’s fine.”

He can feel them exchanging looks above his head. 

“I know you guys are a team,” Barry says, trying for gentle. “And you’re at the age where you want to be acting independently all the time. But you don’t need to look at the League as an enemy. We’re here to help you.”

“You didn’t help Bluejay.”

Iris sucks in a breath. “Wally!”

“Well you didn’t!” Wally stands, shoving his chair away from the table with a scrape. “You said, if anything happened, you’d be there! That the whole League would--”

“Wally,” Barry tries to break in, “c’mon, let’s sit down, let’s talk about this.”

“If it were me,” Wally accuses, “if it were me, and you weren’t fast enough, you--”

“Wally!” Barry shouts, and slams his fist down on the table. “Go to your room.”

“It’s not my room,” Wally hisses, “because you’re not my dad, and this isn’t my house!”

He flees, in civilian clothes and regular shoes, feeling the burn of the soles as they disintegrate under the friction. He takes the zig zag way, the long route, makes sure no one is following him.

 

Then he crawls in through Dick’s window. “Dick? It’s me.”

Dick stirs under the blanket. “Wally?”

“I went to the mountain first,” Wally whispers, slipping inside and stepping out of his smoldering sneakers. “I didn’t know you’d be in Gotham.”

“Yeah,” Dick says quietly. “It’s been… awhile. Alfred made pie, though.”

“I yelled at Uncle Barry.”

Dick lifts the blanket. Wally strips out of his hoodie, letting it fall to the ground, and then his jeans. He crawls under the blanket in his t-shirt and boxers, sighing. Dick yawns against his shoulder, wriggling over to half flop atop him. “Wanna talk about it?”

“What do you do when you yell at Batman?”

“He yells back, mostly. Why? Did Barry yell at you?” Her arms tighten around him protectively. “You want me to kick his ass for you?”

Wally rolls his eyes. “Barry doesn’t yell. I mean, not unless I do something to really deserve it. He always tries to be understanding, even if he doesn’t understand anything.”

“Men are dumb,” Dick agrees. “What about Iris?”

“She’s smarter,” Wally agrees. “But it’s more awkward, you know?”

“No,” Dick says dryly, “tell the woman in a city of male capes more about awkward talks. Starfire had to tell me how to use a tampon through the closed bathroom door. And you know she only has one volume.”

Wally winces in sympathy. He rolls over to smash his face into her warm hair. Dick’s hair is silky and thick at the same time, wavy against his nose and smelling like pears and flowers. “I’m glad you’re back here,” he says softly. “It’s good to be home, right?”

Dick is silent for a long time. “Yeah,” she says finally. “It’s good to be home.”

 

Wally loves breakfast at the Manor, because Alfred is the best cook he’s ever met--possibly in the world--and always makes enough that there’s still food left over when Wally’s full. He’s only on his second plate of eggs and toast when the food suddenly turns to stone in his belly. Because no one’s ragging on his chipmunk face or throwing coffee beans at the back of his head, because Jason won’t ever do anything of those things again, nothing so simple as crack a joke or drink a cup of coffee or ruffle Dick’s hair and make her eat something that has more protein than a bowl of sugar cereal. 

And Bruce isn’t there, either, to tell them to knock it out or make Wally feel uncomfortable or make Dick laugh with her mouth open, full of food. 

Wally drops his bacon back onto his plate. 

There’s a rush of wind and his Uncle Barry is standing there, eyes narrowed. He’s out of uniform, and breathing hard. “Where,” he growls, “the hell have you been?”

Wally looks around the dining table. “Uh. Here?”

“Mr. Allen,” Alfred greets, arriving with a cup of coffee. He presses it into Barry’s hand. “Can I fix you a plate?”

“No,” Barry snaps, then takes a deep breath. “No,” he says again, apologetically this time. “I’m sorry. I was worried about Wally.”

“I was here the whole time,” Wally says, scowling. “You don’t have to act like I’m irresponsible.”

“I called Batman,” Barry says, “and he said he didn’t know if you were here. He didn’t even know if Dick was here.”

Dick flinches. 

Barry’s eyes dart to her, widening. “Uh. I didn’t mean to tell you that.”

Dick stares at her cereal, blinking. “It’s fine. He told me to stay at the mountain, anyway.”

“Wally,” Barry says. “Can we take a walk? You and Dick can… go back to whatever you were doing after.”

 

They go out the back, into the gardens. “They’re Alfred’s,” Wally explains, when Barry’s eyebrow arches in surprise. “His roses win awards and stuff.”

“I know,” Barry starts, after a quiet silence. “I know this is the first time that someone you’ve--a peer--has died. Was killed. Because of what we do. And it was someone very close with your friend.”

“Dick’s not my friend,” Wally says stubbornly. “She’s my best friend.”

Barry’s smiling, looking out at the trees. “Of course. I remember when she asked me for your hand in marriage.”

Wally kicks a rock, flushing in embarrassment. “We thought if we were married we’d get to have sleepovers every day. And we’d be protected by spousal privilege when called upon in court.”

“It was cute. Strangely legally minded, but she is a Bat. There are worse things to have for a daughter-in-law.”

Wally jerks in surprise. “Niece in law,” he corrects.

Barry sits on a bench. “Sit with me a minute?”

Wally sits, wiggling his toes in the emergency sneakers he keeps in Dick’s closet. 

“I know I’m not your dad. I would never try to take your dad’s place, because he’s here and he loves you and you love him.”

“Okay,” Wally mutters. “Good.”

“Wally,” Barry says, hesitant and careful. “You know that… that my dad wasn’t around, when I was growing up.”

Wally fidgets. “I know.”

“Right. I was lucky, though, because I had someone looking out for me, helping me with the hard stuff. And when you’re a teenager, everything in the hard stuff. And I didn’t have superpowers. I know this is hard on you, harder on you than it was for me. And I’m not trying to be your dad, but I do hope you know I’m someone who’s looking out for you.”

Wally tries to wipe his eyes on his wrist while making it look like he isn’t tearing up. “I know you are.”

“When Batman called the League, he asked for me specifically. You know his stance on metas in Gotham. But I was one of the first on scene. Kal and I searched for four days without stopping.”

“I shouldn’t have,” Wally starts, but Barry quiets him, a hand on his shoulder.

“I won’t say I thought about you the whole time, because I was focused, we--at first we hoped we’d find him alive. But when we finally… stopped. You were the only thing I could think about. And I,” Barry isn’t exactly dry eyed himself. “I hope you won’t hold it against me if I--think of you as more than a nephew.”

“Okay,” Wally mumbles, and then throws his arms around Barry’s shoulders. “I won’t hold it against you.”

Barry’s arms settle around his back, a palm rubbing comfortingly. “Thanks, kid.”

“Dick’s really sad,” Wally whispers into Barry’s shirt. “I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Me neither,” Barry admits. “No one ever really knows how to fix it.”

“That sucks.”

Barry laughs, a little wet and not very mirthful. “Yeah, it does. Sorry kid. Welcome to adulthood.”

 

They go back into breakfast, where Barry eats Wally’s weight in pancakes before disappearing downstairs with a grim expression and the need to speak directly to Bruce. Dick and Wally play video games in the library, the sound turned up so they don’t have to talk too much. 

Barry appears after less than two hours, his jaw clenched. “Hey Dick,” he says, trying for a cheery smile. “Would you like to come over for dinner? We can pick up that new zombie movie that just came out on blueray.”

Dick’s jaw clenches. “If he wants me gone,” she says, colder than anything. “He can tell me himself.”

Barry’s shoulders slump. “Bats,” he mutters, but nods his acceptance. “I’ll be checking on you, though. And I’m telling Kal on him. C’mon Wally, time to go.”

Dick kisses Wally’s cheek goodbye at the door. “Text me?”

“As soon as I get home,” Wally promises.

“There’s something to be said here,” Barry says, while they’re running home in streaks of red and orange. “About the warning signs of codependency.”

“Should have let us get married,” Wally says, matching their speeds so they can hear each other without shouting. “Dick went to the courthouse to steal the actual forms.”

“Alarming,” Barry mutters, “but not unsurprising.”

++

The zeta tube chimes. Wally doesn’t think too much of it until he hears the end of the callsign. _Red Arrow_. He and M’gann look at each other, frowning. M’gann puts the bowl of cookie batter aside. “We should call the senior team,” M’gann says nervously. “He’s not supposed to--”

“Robin!” Roy yells from the other room. “We need to talk!”

“Call someone,” Wally agrees, pushing his phone into M’gann’s hand. “I’ll handle him.”

He darts into the living room. “Roy,” he starts, and then stops. “Roy?”

Roy looks--Wally’s never seen anyone look like that. 

“Where is she,” he rasps, and he’s not even wearing a domino. “I need to talk to her, I need to--”

“You will not,” Kaldur interrupts. “The only thing you need to do is sit down before I make you.”

“Before _we_ make you,” Wally corrects. 

Roy snarls at them, listing to one side. Wally thinks he’s hurt, until Kaldur speaks again.

“You’re drunk.”

“A true genius,” Roy spits out. “A real leader.”

“Robin’s not here,” Wally snaps. “And you shouldn’t be.”

Roy looks at them both for a long time. Then he spits to the side. In the doorway, communicator clutched in her hands, M’gann flinches.

“You are not welcome here,” Kaldur says, stepping forward. His weight shifts threateningly. “You will leave immediately.”

“Tell her to meet me,” Roy says, after a long pause where Wally holds his breath. “She knows where.”

The zeta tube chimes again, announcing his departure. Then again, as Black Canary arrives, frowning. “Where is he?”

“Left,” Kaldur says, and starts to describe the encounter.

Wally goes to Gotham.

 

Dick is watching television with Donna. They’re both a little teary to have truly been watching Looney Tunes, but Wally isn’t going to press them on it. Donna kisses Dick’s hair before she leaves, promising a day out into the shopping district later that week.

“It’s Roy,” Wally blurts, as soon as they’re alone. Dick’s eyes go big. “He was… messed up. And shouting for you. I thought you hadn’t seen him in years?”

Dick frowns, looking away. “Did he say where to meet?”

“He said you’d know.”

Dick thinks for a second, then nods sharply. “The amusement park.”

“You’re not serious? You’re not going to meet him. Were you listening when I said how messed up he was? He was messed up!”

“He’s always been messed up,” Dick says absently. “He’s just getting worse at hiding it.”

“Fine,” Wally says, because no one has ever yet successfully convinced Dick not to make a terrible decision when her heart is set on it. No one except Jason, anyway. “I’m coming with you.”

Dick grins at him, fierce and sudden. “Terror twins on the case?”

Jason’s nickname for their childhood shenanigans. “T-squared,” Wally agrees, and bumps his fist against hers.

++

Of course Roy Harper likes abandoned theme parks. Why couldn’t he have deeply enjoyed well lit coffee shops, Wally thinks morosely, ducking under the rusted chainlink fence. Or meadows with wildflowers. 

“Creepy,” he mutters, not for the first time. 

Dick doesn’t respond, her footsteps silent and her eyes focused. She’d refused to let Wally run them straight in, insisting they walk. “We’re not far,” she says now. 

“Are you going to tell me why he needs to talk to you?”

Dick’s face tightens. “Not yet.”

Wally sighs. He kicks an empty soda can, watching it skitter across the concrete. “We’re not climbing that ferris wheel, are we?” It looks more rust than steel.

Dick doesn’t smile at his poor joke. “The food court.”

Wally’s stomach grumbles. Dick glares at him. “Sorry, sorry.” He unwraps a protein bar, stuffing the wrapper into his pocket. “You know how it is.”

Dick’s walking slower and slower, like she doesn’t want to reach their destination and the awaiting confrontation. She comes to a complete stop just outside a large building. “I… will you do something with me, after?”

“Of course.”

Dick turns to him, her eyes oddly bright. “I mean it, Walls. No matter what you’re about to hear, about to learn. You can hate me if you want, I just--I need your help first.”

“I won’t hate you,” Wally protests, and steps closer, trying to grab her hand. She pulls away from the touch before he can make contact. 

“Promise me. You’ll do one thing for me, after this.”

“Dick--”

“Promise me!”

“Okay,” Wally says. “I promise, okay?”

Dick sags, slumping in on herself. “Okay. C’mon.”

 

Roy is sitting on a half-broken plastic table, the kind with the benches bolted straight into the ground. His hands are clenched into trembling fists. “You came.”

Dick doesn’t reply, slowing to a stop a good five feet away from him. 

“And you brought your little boyfriend. Is it an open relationship?”

Dick’s lip lifts in a sneer. “Don’t be a stereotype, Harper.”

Roy’s face goes from anger to grief so fast it gives Wally whiplash. “He told me to look out for you.”

Dick flinches with her whole body. Wally steps up to her, tries to lay a comforting hand on her back. She jerks away and shoots him a glare. Wally lets his hands fall, feeling awkward and out of the know and uneasy on his feet. 

“I’m not,” Roy says, visibly trying to smooth his demeanor. With the anger gone, the hollows of his cheeks are pronounced, the faint listing of his balance to one side. “I’m not--I don’t blame you. That’s what I wanted to say.”

Dick scoffs. “Save it for when you lie during meetings.”

“I don’t go to meetings,” Roy counters simply, and Dick shakes her head. She turns. 

“C’mon Wally. There’s nothing here to bother with.”

“He told me to look out for you,” Roy repeats, quieter. Dick stills, but doesn’t turn. She looks at Wally, stricken. “I promised I would, if anything ever…” Roy trails off, swallowing. “I can’t do it, right now. Not the way I promised. But if you need something, contact me. I’ll make it happen. For Jay.”

“For Jay,” Dick echoes, so soft Wally can barely hear it. Then she shakes her head. “Wally,” she says, reaching for him. He grips her hand too tight. “Wally, get me out of here.”

“It’s not your fault,” Wally hears Roy call after them, scooping Dick up to cradle her against his chest, “It’s mine.”

 

Wally runs them to Gotham. He loops the manor once before veering off into the countryside. He stops on a freeway overpass, quiet and empty, lit by the moon. He lets Dick pretend her tears are from the wind in her face. 

“He was wrong,” Dick says, sitting on the edge of the bridge and letting her feet dangle between the concrete rails. 

Wally sits next to her.

“It was my fault,” Dick whispers. The breeze catches her words and carries them away. “I wanted to make him mad, I--he walked in on me and Roy. He said he didn’t ever want to look at me again, and then he went to Gotham by himself and the Joker found him and it’s my fault because I knew that would upset him, I knew Roy is his best--was. Was his best friend.”

Wally listens. He sits on his hands to keep himself quiet. 

“I’ve never seen Roy look like that. Bruce looks--” Dick shakes her head. “I think he knows, but we haven’t talked about it. We haven’t talked at all.”

Slowly, carefully, Wally eases an arm around her shoulders. When she doesn’t tense he gently tugs her in against his side. “It’s not your fault,” he says firmly. “Don’t argue, I’m older and I’m right.”

Dick doesn’t say anything, but Wally isn’t stupid enough to think he’s managed to convince her. He also isn’t stupid enough to tell her he heard Uncle Barry telling Aunt Iris that Oliver cut ties with Roy for good, and his callsign is locked out of both the Watchtower and Mt. Justice. “So,” he says, trying for levity. “You and Roy Harper, huh? Isn’t he a little old for you?”

Dick rolls her eyes, then leans her head on his shoulder. “Not a bad kisser, though.”

“Gross.”

Dick huddles closer to him and he turns, pulling her into a hug that ends with her half crawled into his lap. “You weren’t mad he called you my boyfriend?”

“Everyone calls everyone your boyfriend.”

“I’m building a harem,” Dick mumbles.

“You don’t have to joke,” Wally says. “You know that, right? You don’t have to. Not with me.”

Dick is quiet for a minute. “I want to burn some stuff. Will you help?”

“What stuff?”

Dick shrugs one shoulder. “Bruce put his suit up in this case thing, in the cave. It’s awful. Some other stuff too, he had these books Bruce got him for his birthday, a little ship model he and Roy built when they were little--”

“You want to burn Jason’s stuff?” Wally is horrified. “Bruce will kill you.”

Dick stiffens against him. “You promised.”

“I know,” Wally says, “I know I did, I just--don’t you want to keep some things to remember him by?”

Dick’s frowning. “It. It keeps him here. It’s not right, it’s bad luck.” She pauses, frustrated. “Not bad luck, it’s bad--” she says something in Romani, quick and sharp, then looks at him like she expects him to understand. He clearly doesn’t. “I burned my mother’s ribbons,” she says. “I burned my father’s jacket. You have to.” Her breath smells like coffee, and he wonders how long she’s been awake. “It--it could be bad, otherwise.”

“Like… ghosts?” Dick is still frowning and Wally fumbles for his words. “I mean, not ghost-ghosts, I just. This is a thing from the circus?”

Dick sits up, taking her warmth away from his side. “It’s not a circus thing.”

“I’m just trying to understand.”

Dick glares down at the freeway, the play of the headlights over the concrete dividers. “You don’t have to understand. You promised you’d help.”

“I will,” Wally says immediately. “I will. I promise. But I think I can. If you want to talk, I mean. I know I don’t get it. But I want to.”

Dick looks at him, the flashes of light glinting off her pupil, the moon behind her head like a halo. “Bruce never learned to speak Rom.”

Wally blinks. “Oh. Because it’s not as spoken as much, I guess, right? He learns the ones that are important to know.”

Dick says nothing, looking away. “Yeah, I guess.”

Wally feels off-footed. “I--I mean. I think that’s how he figured it. Who he’d need to talk to, so, um.”

“Wally,” Dick says, with an air of finality. “Take me home.”

++

Wally stands in his kitchen, barefoot. He watches the microwave hum. 

“Wally?”

Wally starts. He turns, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry Aunt Iris. Did I wake you?”

“No.” Iris shuffles into the kitchen, yawning. “Always been a night owl.”

The microwave beeps. Wally takes his mug out, ripping the packet of hot chocolate open and shaking it in. “Do you want one?”

“If you’re offering.”

Wally readies another mug of milk. The microwave drones on again. “I think I messed up,” Wally says, stirring a little too fast. Some of the milk sloshes onto the counter. 

Iris bumps her hip against his, shifting him sideways, to take over stirring. “Tell me about it.”

“I ran my mouth,” Wally mutters, scowling at the microwave, the timer counting down. “Like I always do.”

Iris takes a slow sip. “So run it so more.”

Wally blinks. “Huh?”

“This person you messed up with, are they important to you?”

“Yes,” Wally says, without pause.

“Are you important to them?”

“Yes,” Wally says, more slowly but no less firmly. “Yes.”

“Then they know you run your mouth. And they know your heart’s in the right place. So go back and talk it out. And then show with your actions you understand.”

The microwave beeps. Wally’s still frowning. Then he shakes his head. “Uncle Barry was right. You’re always the smartest person in the room.”

Iris laughs. “An indictment of my workplace. Don’t stay up too late, okay?” She turns to leave, still holding her mug.

Wally darts across the room to kiss her cheek, back in front of the counter before she can blink. “G’night, Aunt Iris.”

++

He wakes up because Superboy is in his bedroom, yelling. He leaps out of bed with a yelp, tripping over the tangle of blankets around his legs, and scrambles back until he bumps against the wall. “What the hell, man?”

“Where is she!”

Conner grabs for him and Wally dodges. “Not here!”

Conner opens his mouth to respond and Barry arrives in a streak of red, planting himself between the two boys. “You better have a good reason for interrupting my Saturday, Kent.”

“It’s a private matter,” Conner snaps. 

“Out,” Barry orders. “Wally will get dressed and join you outside.”

Conner leaves, glaring all the while. “Make it _fast_.”

Barry watches him go. He look at Wally. “Seriously?”

Wally looks down at his boxers: tiny batman symbols dot them. There’s a heart in the shape of the Batsignal on the crotch. “Dick gave them to me.”

“Co-dependent,” Barry mutters. He clears his throat. “Do you need backup on this?”

“No. If it was really urgent he’d have called in the rest of the team.”

“Fine. Keep me updated.”

 

Connor is waiting, arms crossed and face set. “If she didn’t tell you and she didn’t tell me, who’s helping her?”

Wally taps away at his phone. “How do you even know she’s up to no good?”

“She took some things from the mountain. And Batman called. Said she took some things from the cave.” Conner shifts his weight, scowl deepening. “Who are you texting?”

“Someone who would help her.” Wally stares at the text chain on his phone, the single text to a number he shouldn’t know. _Jason_ , the text says. 

Roy calls fifteen seconds later. He sounds rough, but focused. “What do you want?”

“He wouldn’t have wanted her to go after him,” Wally says. “You know that.”

Roy is silent for a second. “I owed her,” he says. “Something you don’t know about. I did a shit thing, and I owed her one.”

“Fine. Just tell me where she’s going.”

Roy laughs at him. “If you really don’t know, she made the right move leaving you behind.” He hangs up.

Wally pulls his goggles over his eyes. “Gotham,” he tells Connor. Meet me at Arkham.”

 

Wally is just starting to slow to a stop when Connor crashes into him, lifting him up into the air as he flies. Wally flails. “Hey!”

Connor dips, unsteady, and finally sets Wally on the ground. “I can hear,” he says, cutting off Wally’s indignant squawking. “Superman is yelling at her.”

“Lead the way.”

 

By the time they make it to the clearing, Superman isn’t yelling anymore. His arms are crossed across his chest, and his head is tilted. He’s listening to something. 

“Hey,” Dick says quietly, upon seeing them. “Shoulda known Speedy would snitch me out.”

“Robin,” Wally says, zipping to her side. “Are you okay?”

Connor arrives in front of her, eyes narrowed. “Broken,” he says succinctly.

“What! Where?”

Dick bats his wringing hands away with one hand. “Relax, Kid Mom. Collarbone. Nothing that won’t heal.”

“You promised,” Wally says, “you promised to take me with you.”

Dick’s eyes flash. “ _You_ promised,” she hisses, and then winces. 

Connor is unmoved. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Dick says bitterly. “Nothing at all.”

Superman clears his throat. “Batman has finished at the scene,” he says. “He’s headed back. You need medical attention; I’ll take you to the Watchtower.”

Wally grabs her elbow. “Hey. Fill us in.”

“She’s grieving,” Superman says. He touches her side lightly. “Come to Metropolis while you heal up. We’ll talk.”

Dick looks away. Then she nods once, sharp. Superman lifts her, careful, into a bridal carry. 

Wally tightens his grip. “You,” he starts with a snarl, but Dick winces and he withdraws. “Fly careful,” he says to Superman. 

Connor and Wally watch them rise into the air. “She tried to kill the Joker,” Connor says. “She couldn’t do it. Batman took him to Arkham.”

“Does Batman talk to himself?”

“No. Someone in the cave.”

Wally exhales, adrenaline riding him ragged with no outlet for it. “Do you think he knows you can hear that well?”

Connor’s lip twitches upwards. “Definitely not.”

++

Run your mouth, Wally thinks. Run it and then run it some more and if there’s one thing at all in the world he feels like he can do, it’s run.

So he runs. 

In and out through the cave, teeth gritted against the jagged shock of the security defense systems. Up like a whirlwind through Dick’s room, through Jason’s. Out across the lake and through the woods and all the way from Gotham to Metropolis. Up the side of the building to the roof access door. 

He knocks on Superman’s front door. Clark Kent opens it, smiling. “Wallace.”

Wally shifts awkwardly on his feet, arms full of items. “Is Dick…?”

“The guest room.”

“Right.” Wally edges past Superman (Superman!) and tries not to cringe under the heavy gaze on his back as he trots through the kitchen down the hallway.

“Wally,” Clark calls after him. “Door stays open, okay?”

Wally doesn’t look back so Clark can’t see his blush. 

Dick is sitting on the bed, messing around on her phone and looking morose. Her arm is in a sling. “Wally?”

“Yeah.” Wally dumps the armful of stuff onto the edge of the bed, avoiding her legs under the blanket. “I’m a moron. But I keep my promises.” He lifts the corner of the sheet he’d used to wrap the most important item. “And we don’t have long before Batman comes looking.”

Dick’s breath catches. She touches Jason’s suit, the ragged edges of it. “The case has security measures.”

“Tell me about it.” Wally tugs the sleeve of his shirt up, showing the healing burn. 

Dick reaches under the bed, pulling out a duffel bag. She empties the contents onto the floor, then stuffs what Wally had brought inside it: his suit, her fingers lingering over the bluejay emblem on the breast, the three books that looked most well loved from Jason’s room, the red chucks from his closet held together just by the laces. 

“I wasn’t sure what to take,” Wally says. “I tried.”

She catches his hand, palms sliding against each other. Then she flips it up to stroke her thumb across his wrist. “Thank you.” She coughs, dropping his hand, and stands, crossing the room to the window. She slings a leg over the sill and cracks her wrist. “C’mon. The roof will do.”

 

The roof is cold. “We could have used the door,” Wally mutters. 

“Locked.” Dick is laying out the items on the concrete floor, tucking the laces inside the shoes, running her fingers over the cracks in the spines of the books. 

Wally scoffs. As if a lock could keep Dick out of anything. He passes her a small can of lighter fluid when she holds out an expectant hand. “Do you, uh. Say anything? For Jas--”

“Don’t,” Dick interrupts sharply. “Don’t say his name.” She sighs. “Maybe,” she says, cryptic. Then she winces. “It’s all… it’s a little fuzzy, to be honest. I was little the last time I saw it. Did you bring a light?”

“Baby,” Wally says, winking big and ridiculous. “I am your light.”

Dick laughs. She’s barefoot, there’s sweat on her hairline from the exertion of climbing to the roof with one arm. She looks a little bit like she wants to cry and a little bit like she wants to fight. She does whisper something, just before Wally makes a spark jump between his fingers and set everything alight. It’s so soft and so quiet he can’t make it out, even if it had been in English.

They hold hands and watch everything burn.

++

“Uncle Barry?”

Barry jumps, hiding something behind his back. “Wally! I’m just… enjoying some of those cookies your Aunt made for us yesterday.”

“You’re putting them down the garbage disposal.”

Barry sighs. He removes the tin from where he was hiding it and sets it on the counter. “Marriage is a lot of things, kid. Don’t judge what works.”

“Yeah,” Wally says, “I don’t really care about your weird boring secrets. Can I, um. Talk to you about something? It’s important.”

Barry looks at him. “Of course. You want a snack?”

Wally’s stomach rumbles. Barry smiles. He makes them a pair of sandwiches, piled high with leftovers and condiments and extra hot sauce for Barry. He doesn’t push or prod or prattle on about anything, staying quiet and waiting Wally out. 

They sit at the kitchen table. “It’s about Dick,” Wally admits.

Barry nods. He takes a big bite, gesturing at Wally to continue. 

“Do you think I like her?” Wally blushes. “You know. _Like _like her.”__

__“You’re the only one that can know that.” Barry wipes his mouth across the back of his hand, then licks the streak of mustard away. “But I won’t pretend I didn’t see some form of this conversation coming.”_ _

__“I know what people say,” Wally says. “I’m not stupid.”_ _

__“Dick,” Barry says carefully, “is going through a lot right now. That kind of stuff, it can make people…” his mouth twists. “You have to be cautious, that’s all. With her and with yourself.”_ _

__“That’s not an answer.” Wally glares at his sandwich, untouched on the plate. “Tell me what I should do.”_ _

__Barry reaches over and pushes Wally’s plate closer. “Okay. You should eat something, and then maybe take a nap. If you want to run some of your Aunt’s cookies to Timbuktu or somewhere equally far away, that would be helpful too.”_ _

__Wally stands. “I’m going to Metropolis.”_ _

__Barry lifts the plate. “Eat first. Let me tell you what girls don’t like, platonically or otherwise: when you faint because you were too stupid to eat lunch before going out.”_ _

__++_ _

__Dick answers the door. “Hey. I got your text. Clark’s out, but you can help me pack.”_ _

__Wally follows her to the guest room. “You’re going back to Gotham?”_ _

__“No,” Dick says, simply. There are clothes strewn across the bed, toiletries half packed on the desk. “But I can’t keep staying here. Clark’s too nice to say it, but he’s not used to living with a teenager, and he’s got his own life going on. And he needs Bruce. Bruce needs him.”_ _

__“Bruce--”_ _

__“Bruce,” Dick repeats. She sits down on the bed. “When I--when I tried to go after the Joker.” She touches the bandages under her shirt, her broken collarbone. “He asked me if I hadn’t already done enough. That if I didn’t learn from Bluejay then I would never learn.”_ _

__Wally’s breath catches._ _

__“He fired me. Robin’s done.”_ _

__Wally sits down hard next to her, the bed bouncing. “You can stay with me,” he decides._ _

__Dick smiles at him. “Oh Walls. You’re with Barry more than your own house.”_ _

__“You can stay with me there,” Wally insists. “I’ll clear out half the closet; Aunt Iris is always saying she needs another girl in the house to balance out our stupidity. And we’ll be easier to reach, for missions. We’re not that far away from eighteen, and we’ll get our own place then.”_ _

__Dick shakes her head at him. “I love you, Wallace West.”_ _

__“I asked Uncle Barry if I wanted to date you.”_ _

__Dick blinks. “How would he know?”_ _

__Wally shrugs. “He’s smart, sometimes. Especially about dating stuff. He and Aunt Iris are the best.”_ _

__“Yeah,” Dick agrees, smiling. “You know I had to call Starfire to help me with tampon stuff? Batman knows everything but as soon as someone starts bleeding out the vagina he has important cases to work.” Her smile tugs down at the mention of Bruce. “I guess that doesn’t matter anymore.”_ _

__“Everyone says we shouldn’t be friends, that we couldn’t possibly just be friends. They’ve been saying it for years.”_ _

__Dick sighs. She slings an arm around his shoulders and pulls him close. “Listen up, Kid NoHetero. We are teenaged vigilantes and international superheroes. No one gets to tell us how we should be friends.”_ _

__“I do, you know,” Wally says. “I do love you.”_ _

__Dick’s chin is on his shoulder, her hair swooped into her eyes. “Wallace West,” she says, and kisses him, feather light, eyes open. Her lips are soft and chapped, her eyelashes sweep her cheek when she blinks. “You taste like mustard.”_ _

__Wally laughs, head tipped back and shoulders shaking. “I miss him,” he says, when he’s done, carefully avoiding using his name. “I miss the way you were when he was here.”_ _

__Dick slips a map out from under the pillow. It crinkles between her fingers. There’s a symbol sketched in the corner, a bird in dark blue ballpoint pen. “Wally,” she says. “Have you ever been to a city called Bludhaven?”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway I'm still plugging away at the next actual chapter, but there's a lot of work stuff and personal stuff and also now i'm SICK so yeah. Sorry there may be a substantial delay in the next chapter, especially considering how fast the first three went up. Please bear with me :). I'm on tumblr @ sunspill as my main, @nahekalei for comic sideblog stuff.
> 
> (also i know the joker did not kill jason in this story but they do think that at this point)
> 
> also also there was an age discrepancy/mistake in the first chapter and I'm adjusting it now. Dick and Jason are three years apart and anything that leads you to think otherwise is because math is hard for me, okay. I have never pretended not to be a full dumbass.


	5. Dick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason at twenty five is a whole lot different than Jason at eighteen-almost-nineteen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> time jump!!!!!
> 
> I don't have a beta and this was very long and also I was high when I edited it so I'm sure it contains typos and bad grammar, etc. Please forgive me. 
> 
> Last thing: it's been pretty gen so far but this is absolutely fulfilling the jay/dick tag now.

The way Jason thinks about it, there’s a universe down there. He can feel it sometimes, in the dragging tips of his fingers and the limpness of his feet. A billion tiny prinpicks on every millimeter of his skin, and each one is a portal to a star. Stars are the brightest things out there, he figures, so that’s what they are, when they open up and eclipse his senses. When they burn his thoughts away.

Explains why he feels like an alien in his own skin after, why he can barely open and close his eyes or twitch his fingers for the first two days. His thoughts orbit each other, floating and dragging, ellipses that never touch. He remembers the constellations, and all the gaps between them, all the blank black spaces where things he used to know should be. 

So the way he thinks about it, there’s another universe down there, in the green green pits. 

++

Jason waits on a rooftop. Down to his right, a semi-truck is burning within the wreckage of a warehouse. It doesn’t take long for his eyes to pick out the flutter of Batman’s cape, growing nearer and nearer. 

And just there, running in his shadow: a flash of a red chest under a dark cape. Robin red.

Jason’s whole body tenses. He’s halfway to the fire escape when he stops. Robin didn’t follow Batman into the warehouse, instead finding a perch atop the roof of the building over, crouched in shadow. Under his helmet, Jason smiles. 

He grapples over, landing catfooted and silent. Then he kicks up a spray of gravel to make Robin flinch and whirl around. “Still doesn’t let you play with the big kids? Still sitting at the little kid table?”

Robin, after a start, slips into a fighting stance, a metal bo staff extending with a snap. The stance is all wrong; Dick favors dual wielding.

Jason closes the distance between them, taking a stinging hit on his shoulder before he yanks the staff away and grabs Robin by the throat. “Who are you?!”

The kid tries to stab him with a batarang. It cracks against his helmet, scratching one of his eye lenses. Jason slams him against the ground, planting a knee in his sternum and pinning him down. “You gave an okay scrap,” Jason sneers. “For a rookie. But you pale in comparison.” The kid tries to bite him and Jason slaps him across the face, more stinging and humiliating than a genuine hit. Then he pulls a knife from his boot and puts it against the kid’s chest, just above his heart. 

Robin goes still. Wide eyes behind the mask and none of her effortless grace and how did Jason ever think this was Dick? Too small by half, even when Dick was sixteen--and she’s got to be bigger, now, right? Got to move differently--but where is she? Robin was hers, was her _mother’s_. Jason’s always thought there’d only ever be one way to make her give it up.

Jason doesn’t realize he’s grinding his weight down until the kid makes a noise, just a tiny pained choked out gasp. “Imposter,” Jason hisses, and he can feel it, the hole in his heart, its yawning hunger. The green haze that makes his vision narrow and the blood rush in his ears. Talia _promised_ him Dick was alive. She’d sworn it.

His knife digs into the body armor; it’s a League blade and sharper than anything Jason has ever encountered. The body armor is losing the fight. “Where. Is. _Robin_?”

He hears the metal click of it, the scrape against the rough tipped fingers of the gauntlet. He yanks his head back just in time--a batarang whistles through the air where he’d just been and embeds itself into the stone behind him. Jason rolls, over the kid’s body and yanking him up as he turns, crouched and using Robin as a shield. 

“Leave him,” Batman (Batman, _Bruce_ ) growls, and his weight shifts, preparing for another attack.

Jason lays the knife against the kid’s throat, dragging it down to his heart again. The tip rests in the jagged tear he’d made earlier. “Careful,” he mock whispers, “sshhh, careful.” His voice comes out distorted through the helmet, deeper and more robotic than his natural tones. “Your track record for sidekicks isn’t so good, is it?”

Batman snarls. 

Jason strains to see a difference in him. Are there new lines on his face, greys in his hair? Does he favor one side over the other, have new aches? The shadows and the cowl hide it all. “This isn’t the little bird I was expecting. Moved on to a new model already?”

Batman doesn’t react. 

So Dick isn’t dead, then. Some of the rage fades. “This was fun,” he says, his voice gone low and smirking. “But I think it’s enough for today.” 

“You’re done,” Batman promises; his weight shifts. “Forever.”

Jason smiles under his helmet. “Sure B, whatever you say.” 

It’s exactly what he used to say, over and over, a hundred times. He used to like the way it made Bruce’s eye twitch. 

Batman freezes, inhaling sharply.

Jason throws Robin over the edge of the roof. His fingers catch in the hole his knife carved, ripping the stylized _R_ emblem away. He escapes into the shadows while Batman is rescuing Robin. 

 

Jason dials Talia, his finger halfway to trigger the call before he stops. They have a deal, and this was never a part of it. And there’s no need to… pull her attention to Dick. Jason’s got an itch, that’s all, got a yen. Wants to see how she’s changed, how she’s stayed the same. After that, he’s done. It’s not like it’d be hard to track her down.

An itch to scratch, is all it is. A prickle to be soothed, just like the drag of Robin’s torn crest on the palm of his hand, over and over while he thinks. All he needs from her, just one thing, a single detour before he burns Gotham to the ground: did she even miss him at all?

 

The tabloids say Dick Grayson is in Bludhaven. Jason packs a bag.

++

Jason at twenty five is a whole lot different than Jason at eighteen-almost-nineteen. He looks older than he is, could pass for thirty. His body’s changed: he’s taller and bulkier, traded all his old scars for new ones, his features are starker and his hair streaked with pure white strands. Even so, and even if she truly believes he’s dead in the ground, Dick was trained by the same paranoid detective Jason was, and there’s no way she won’t start to get at least suspicious if he spends an extended period of time completely bare-faced with her without some care. 

So he stands in the aisle of the drugstore, staring at the shelf. He hates it here, hates the harshness of the cheap fluorescent lights and the rows and rows of five million versions of the same goddamn thing. It’s so _much_ and he feels sick just looking at all the choices. He knows he’s been in stores before, a hundred times, in the Before. Logically, he must have. He just doesn’t remember it. 

He’s almost frozen, all that training and the scars to prove it and the cosmetics aisle at a convenience store brings him to his knees. Not blond, he thinks, when he manages to make himself focus. That leaves black or red. 

Wally, Babs, Roy. (Roy).

Jason grabs a box of Dark Copper #4. 

++

Before he goes, he hits three of Bruce’s safehouses. All heavily fortified, all with cutting edge security, all completely untraceable except that Jason used to have as much of Bruce’s trust as he allowed anyone. He leaves the cameras on; the point is to be witnessed. He cuts the mattresses open, he shreds the chairs and couches. Smashes the plates and cups, dumps the first aid kits out onto the ground. He’d shoot his name into the wall but it’s a lot harder than those old cartoons Dick used to watch made it look. 

Little bit of spray paint and few jagged _HA HA_ s in his wake and if it’s overdone at least no one can say he strays from theme. He carves a bat into the kitchen tables and lights it all on fire before he leaves. The Red Hood of Gotham making his first mark.

++

Bludhaven is just as shit as Jason remembers it. Call him biased, but at least Gotham’s got heart under all that grit. Bludhaven’s got sewage atop of sewage; even the decent neighborhoods smell of the landfill. Trust Dickie to have the world at her feet and pick fucking Bludhaven.

Talia calls while he’s securing a warehouse for a base of operations. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

“I don’t make my decisions based on what you notice,” Jason replies, adjusting his security system. 

He can tell by her voice she’s more curious than irritated. “We have a deal, Todd.”

“Todd-Wayne,” he shoots back, and can practically hear her lips thin out over the connection. “And the deal was I do it my way.”

There’s a short silence. “As long as you deliver on your promises.”

Jason hangs up. 

++

There’s a whisper, on the backstreets of the ‘Haven. 

A blackbird, they mutter to each other, between drags on their cigarettes. Silent like an owl, hits like a hawk. Always from above. So fast he’s gotta be a meta. Newspapers call him Nightwing.

It’s two nights of looking before he catches her in the act. Crouched behind a pigeon coop on an old community garden building, watching her in the alleyway just below. She is fast, not a flutter or a clatter before she swoops down upon four men wrestling a woman to the ground. And not a word, which is--

Different. Not unexpected. She’s an adult now, solo in her own city.

Robin was flashy when she fought, purposefully so: fluttering cape and feints to make you look twice while she hit you three times fast. Her cackle laugh in the dark corners and the babble nonsense she let tip out of her mouth; her personality dialed up so bright it disoriented. 

Nightwing is fast. He gets why they think she’s got meta in her, she’s so fast. Silent. And she still flips, twists, bounces off buildings and bodies and contorts herself as she cuts her way through all of the men in less than fifteen seconds. She hits harder than she used to. A broken leg, two broken arms, bloodied noses and lost teeth. Prone bodies groaning on the ground. 

It’s a thing of goddamn beauty. Jason wishes there’d been ten guys instead; fifteen. Watching her fight is the best swell of endorphins he’s ever had: sweeter than a hard fight, sharper than orgasm. He’s dizzy with the headrush of it. 

She stands in the center of her own carnage and breathes, her hands slowly unclenching. She crouches low and moves slowly towards the woman crumpled against the wall. Jason can’t hear the words she’s saying from the distance, but he can make out her tone once in a while, floating on the breeze. Soothing and soft and nonthreatening. 

He takes the opportunity to get his first good look at her. No cape, which he’d already noticed. No cowl or hood, either, just a domino mask that breaks up the features of her face and obscures her eyes and cheekbones. She’s either cut her hair short or secured it flat to her head and clear of the nape of her neck. 

Jason has a flash of memory: her mismatched outfits, the headache inspiring colours she favoured. This suit is dark all over, no flair. He frowns, unhappy with the differences in a way he doesn’t understand and hadn’t anticipated. He stays, he watches. 

And then, eventually, when she stretches out a hand and fires her grapple, her body twisting with the torque and hanging; for a single split fraction of a second in the dim yellow glow of the streetlight: a bird emblem. Navy so dark it’s almost black. A bluejay’s silhouette on her chest.

++

Dick’s apartment building is quiet but run down, too rough around the edges to really ask any questions about her late hours or odd bruises. She goes running every morning and everyone in the neighborhood knows her name. Her smiles are easy and her body language relaxed and isn’t she just Mister Fucking Rogers. Jason punches a garbage can so hard it dents, dislocating his thumb with the force of it. He pops it back in with a snarl, then presses his forehead against the brick wall of the alleyway. 

He breathes, in and out, splaying his hands against the wall. He can feel the grit of the dirt against his skin, the scrape of the stone and the dip of the mortar. He can smell the dumpster behind him, the metallic tang under the stench of rotting food and old coffee grounds. Slowly, the sound of his pulse rushing in his ears fades away and he can hear the traffic, the muted sounds of passerby. 

He steps back, scrubbing at his face. So Dickie’s got what everyone figured she’d want: a quiet life and everyone’s hearts at her feet. “So what,” he says aloud, and the rasp of his own voice breaks the fog in his brain. So what if she moved on and put all her memories of him in a box under her bed to grow dusty and forgotten. “So why,” he continues, voice cracking before it hardens, “why a bluejay?”

++

Dick volunteers at a community center, because of course she does. Jason’s lip curls when he cases it, and he walks around the block twice to work the clench out of his fists. Out one gutter rat and Bruce takes in some pipsqueak with a bostaff taller than himself and Dick thinks spooning out instant mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving is just the same as midnight microwaved baked potatoes and the can of bacon bits hidden from Alfred under the kitchen sink.

When he’s got the green to fade away from the edges of his vision, he slips inside. It’s clean but shabby, well loved but not well funded. Skate park out back: he can hear the rattle of wheels on concrete and teenaged whooping. 

“Hey,” a man says, smiling carefully at him. A sticker on his t-shirt marks him as a volunteer. “You’re new, huh? It can be a lot, at first.”

Jason recalls every iota of subterfuge Clark Kent has made an art of perfecting. Slouched shoulders and hesitant steps, a ducked head and a hint of a stutter. “Yeah. I’m--I just moved here.” A Gotham accent, just slightly altered from his own, thicker than he ever had, once Bruce took him in and he started to lose it in the smooth enunciation of the rich and privileged.

“From Gotham, huh? Have you met Dickie yet?”

“Dickie?” Jason’s voice is bland, politely confused. Inside, something clenches at the nickname, so familiar on someone else’s lips. Bad enough when it was the West kid, but some loser volunteer with a soul patch? Jason’s fingers itch for his guns. 

“Dick Grayson. She’s from Gotham too, kinda famous. That’s why I thought you’d know.”

“Oh,” Jason says, latching onto it as a way in. “Yeah, Grayson.” He shrugs, making it self-deprecating. “We didn’t move in the same circles, but everyone knows Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson.” He lets his gaze get a little hopeful, little starstruck. “She… works here?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the guy says, his smile gone friendly instead of cautious. “She teaches tumbling and self defense for the local kids.” His eyes focus behind Jason. “Hey. We were just talking about you.”

Jason swallows. If Talia could see him now she’d beat him black and blue for taking such a risk. He turns, keeping his body language loose and gangly, tripping just a tad over his own feet. 

Dick looks up at him: it was hard to tell, last night, but she’s barely grown at all since she was sixteen. She comes up lower than his shoulder, hair flopping over one side of her face and cut short otherwise, buzzed fuzzy around her ears. Her eyes are the same; there’s a faint scar above her lip that wasn’t there the last time he saw her. “Hey,” she greets. “You here to learn how to do a somersault?” She smiles at him, and the friendly but polite distance of it helps him settle. 

He offers his hand. “Petey. And here I thought my name begged innuendo.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m Dick.” She shakes his hand, grip firm but not overly so. “You wanna throw out a joke about it, fire away: first one’s free.”

“Can I save it for later?”

Her eyebrow arches. “Presumptive of you. Who says we’ll meet again?”

Jason rolls a shoulder, smirking. “Got a feeling.” Dick’s eyes sharpen and he winces. The whole point was to not draw her attention to him. He adds a touch of interest to his smile, a wink to his tone. “Who else is gonna teach me to cartwheel?”

Her smiles breaks, goes genuine. It lights up her face, crinkling her eyes, even as she gently rebuffs him. “Sorry slugger, you’re too old for my class.”

Jason nods, letting his personality fade into blandness again. “I, uh. I actually heard you guys have a job board up.” He bites his lip. “Got out of Gotham too fast for a reference, if you know what I mean.” Bludhaven’s gotta be lousy with Gotham refugees, fleeing the police or the crimelords or the big bad Bats or just the crushing weight of the rain and the unemployment rate.

Both Dick and the other man soften visibly. “Mark’ll take care of you,” Dick assures him. She touches his shoulder, light and quickly moving away when he tenses under the contact. “And we serve meals from six to eight, morning and night. No questions asked.”

“Thanks,” Jason mutters, keeping his eyes on the floor. He lets Mark lead him away, help him fill out a few job applications, takes a few pamphlets and snags a turkey and cheese sandwich on the way out. 

There’s no reason, he knows, to linger or return. He’s done what he told himself he would do: check on her, face to face. Proven that the Jason Todd-Wayne he was is dead in the truest most final way: when no one remembers what he looked like or sounded like enough to recognize him when he’s standing right in front of them.

Maybe that’s it, he thinks four hours later, watching his feet lead him back around to the skate park and the big windows of the makeshift gymnasium. He’s never been able to have a bruise and not poke at it, feel the sharp bite of pain and the ache deep in the muscle. Dick’s waiting near the parking lot, loitering with a few teenagers. She grins at one, snagging his skateboard and riding it while doing a handstand. She lifts up one hand, flourishing, and then does a flip, landing perfectly balanced in the same position. The boys gape at her and that look, Jason remembers--the fantly slack jawed look of awe that most people aim Dick’s way, tinged with confused attraction.

He lingers too long, because the next thing he knows Dick is staring straight at the shadow he’s standing in, something cold and dangerous flickering across her face before it smoothes into an easy smile. She sends the kids off with a high five and a wave, then beelines straight for Jason. “Center’s closed,” she says, her voice tight but not unfriendly. “There’s a couple of shelters around, if you need somewhere to crash.”

“I got a place,” Jason says. He jerks his head in a random direction. “I was, uh. It’s late, y’know, and I heard this isn’t the best neighborhood.”

Dick looks insulted on Bludhaven’s behalf. “Didn’t think somebody from Gotham would judge a neighborhood by its crime rate.”

“Not at all,” Jason says, rocking back on his heels and calling a blush to his cheeks. “Gothamites don’t judge, but they don’t walk home after dark by themselves either.”

Dick’s face closes. “A nice thought, but I can take care of myself. Swing by Tuesdays or Thursdays at nine if you want a demonstration.”

Jason scratches the back of his head, affecting a sheepish look. “No, I was, um. I was hoping you’d walk _me_ home.”

Dick’s frown freezes, then melts. She laughs, hooking her arm around his neck and using him as a brace, flipping up and walking her feet across the wall at head height, effortless. He freezes, shocked at her initiation of such an intimate touch and shocked also by the way he responds--so hungry for it he’s lightheaded. She lands with a light salute and he forces the longing deep down inside his chest. “Consider me your personal bodyguard.”

“Guess they weren’t lying,” Jason says, when he’s recovered from the drag of her palm on the back of his shoulder. “About the circus.”

“Mm,” Dick agrees. “Lying about a lot, yeah, but not that.”

“I didn’t follow the tabloids,” Jason rushes to assure her, as they start off down the street. He pictures the map of the city in his head; there’s a shitty apartment complex just a few blocks away, and he aims them towards it. “You know, just saw them around. Don’t wantcha to think I’d believe that garbage.”

Dick hums, acknowledging but not engaging on the hounding of Gotham’s trashiest rags and the Wayne name. “What made you leave Gotham?”

Jason flinches. Face down in an alleyway with Talia’s sword against his chest and everything that came after, the green green glow of it. His breathing quickens; he can feel cold sweat in the small of his back.

“I’ll go first,” Dick says, pretending not to notice. “I mean, everyone knows the general, but they all acted like Bruce dropkicked me to Bludhaven. I picked it.”

“How come,” Jason manages, and he keeps his voice from shaking, which is as much of a win as he can manage. Dick loops her arm through his, her warmth a steadying presence at his side.

“I grew up in the circus, you know, and everyone thinks it was either the one from _Dumbo_ or the one from _Moulin Rouge_.”

“Moulin Rouge was a brothel.”

“Meh,” Dick says, waving a hand. “It was fun and magic, sure, but it was hard too. We had a trailer, and it was small and cramped and it leaked when it rained. For days after a storm it smelled like wet damp cloth and the bleach my dad used to keep the mold away.”

Her voice is light and her cadence dips and rises and Jason’s shoulders are relaxed before he knows it. “Plenty of mold in the Haven.”

“Sure,” Dick agrees, grinning, and then stops. “Hold on a second.” She trots across the street, dropping a few bills into a homeless man’s empty coffee cup and exchanging words before jogging back over. “What were we talking about?”

“Why you moved to Bludhaven.”

“I visited,” Dick resumes, bumping up against his side but not taking his arm again. Jason shoves his hand in his jacket pocket, feeling oddly cold without the contact. “With Bruce, some business thing he let me tag along on. So I climb out the hotel balcony--”

Jason laughs. It surprises him more than anything else, a bubble of mirth so joyous he couldn’t hold it in. Of course she scaled a four star balcony right under the Batman’s nose, just to sneak around a city that makes Gotham look like a resort vacation.

Dick’s smiling again, rueful tinged with mischief. “Circus kid, right? I can climb anything. Anyway, it’s raining and I’m out at like, three or four in the morning--”

“For Christ’s sake,” Jason interjects, exasperated. She really hasn’t changed, new uniform and quiet fighting aside. 

She winks at him. “I can take care of myself, I already told you. There’s not much more to the story, though. Walked around and got myself soaked to the skin, climbed up onto a roof to watch the sunrise.”

“How did B-Bruce,” Jason trips over the name, hoping it sells unfamiliarity and not a bone crushing swell of emotions he’s avoiding, “take your walkabout?”

Dick shrugs, expression closing off. “Bruce Wayne has bigger things to occupy his mind than his carnie ward.”

“Ward?” Jason blinks. “Aren’t you his kid?”

Dick snorts. “Nope, not now and not ever.” Her voice comes out harder than maybe she intended, because she forces an easy smile that’s so good he almost buys it as genuine. “Water under the bridge.” They slow to a stop in front of the apartments, the sign declaring them fully furnished and available to rent by the week. “You really don’t read all the gossip rags, huh? They never shut up about how he never properly adopted me. Paving the way for our Woody Allen marriage when I’m old enough, if you believe them.”

“You’re old enough now,” Jason points out, and it makes Dick giggle, nose wrinkled up in distaste.

“Not gonna happen. You good to go, big guy? I can walk you up the stairs if you want me to be a gentleman.”

“I think I can handle it from here.”

Dick bobs her head, zipping up her jacket a little higher and tucking her hands into her pockets. “The pizza place around the corner is famous for bugs in the sauce, by the way. Stay wary.”

She flashes him a peace sign and starts to turn--and Jason should let her, because he did what he wanted. Saw her, spoke to her, touched her even. She didn’t recognize him, or mention him, but he can’t take it as hard as he wants to--most people don’t mention a dead brother right from the go when speaking to strangers. He should take it as the grace it is, the resolution to the promise he made himself when he took Talia’s deal and swore to look back only the once. 

“Tuesdays and Thursdays at nine, right?”

Dick stops. She turns back. “What?”

“Your class. I, uh. I got a job at the warehouse, it’s not so far. I get off at ten... If you don’t mind keeping me safe on my commute home.”

Dick tilts her head at him, eyes hidden in the shadows. Then she smiles. “Sure. Us Gothamites gotta stick together, huh?”

“Something like that,” Jason agrees, and watches her walk away until she turns a corner and disappears.

He goes into the rental office and pays for a furnished one bedroom, three months down at once. He pokes around the place, sets up a few security measures.

++

He finds Nightwing by the docks. Tried and true, a Gotham trick of the trade: always check the docks first. By the time he catches a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye and tracked it down she’s already finished; he swallows down the disappointment of missing her in action, finding a quiet place in a shadow to watch her. She doesn’t take long to finish up, tapping away at a gauntlet and touching her ear once before grappling away. Jason files it away: the computer in her glove might be her own, but there’s someone on the other end of that comm line. If not Bruce, who?

He follows her, across the warehouses towards the river, curious. The docks have gotta be done for the night, with the takedown she’s just initiated and the ruckus it kicked up: the lights of the cop cars are still twinkling in the near distance. He gets his answer when she backflips off a smokestack, fires her grapple sideways, and slingshots herself directly at him.

“Shit,” he has time to mutter, and then he’s twisting, dodging two projectiles and drawing a sidearm from his thigh holster. “Heya,” he greets, smirking under the helmet.

Dick kicks him in the crotch. He turns, averting the worst of the momentum, and he’s wearing a cup, but it smarts like crazy and he grunts, barely managing to land a punch to her sternum. She slides back, reassessing, and her stance shifts. “You are fast,” he allows, spinning the gun lazily in one hand. “No need for fisticuffs, bluebird. Didn’t come here for that.”

“What did you come for?” Dick’s drawn one of those little sticks strapped to her back, and she’s twirling it, effortlessly in sync with Jason’s own movements. It’s eerie in a way that’s purposeful, and Jason is annoyed it’s getting to him. Her voice comes out modulated--some kind of tech on her, since the lower half of her face is completely unobscured, and sounds more masculine than feminine. That coupled with the tight kevlar weave across her torso and the way she hits: the mystery of why all the goons of the ‘Haven think Nightwing is male has been solved.

“It’s so hard to meet nice girls in my line of work,” Jason says, and the way she double-takes is satisfying. “Don’t tell me I’m the only one who’s noticed. None of those drug slingers ever pay you the compliments you so clearly deserve?”

Dick grins at him, all teeth, recovering quickly. “Oh they do. ‘Ow’ and ‘please stop’, mostly. Music to a girl’s ears.”

Jason laughs. It grates out, surprising him. “You did good work down there.”

“And you’re just a friendly neighborhood admirer?”

Jason holsters his gun, a peace offering. “Something like that.”

“You’re from Gotham.”

Jason freezes.

Dick’s smile goes genuine, reading his surprise. “Don’t take it so personal. I’m very observant.”

Jason laughs again, not as joyous as the first time. “Not nearly as much as you think, Girl Wonder.”

It’s Dick’s turn to go still, the white lenses of her mask going wide before narrowing. “What?”

“Oh?” Jason slips a battered pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket, needing to move his fingers to quiet the way his heart is thundering. Nevermind seeing Dick again, talking to Dick again--this is the longest conversation he’s had with anyone since he left Gotham in a body bag. He’s lucky his hands don’t shake when he flips a single cigarette out into his fingers. Can’t smoke with the helmet on but it’s something to fidget with. “Is it a big secret? Gotta forgive me my social faux-paus. Been away from home for a long while.”

“Something tells me you were never big on the social graces to start with.”

Jason exhales, watching the wind blow across the water. “You may have a point there.”

Dick puts her stick away and leans against a chimney, arms crossed and body relaxed. Jason isn’t fooled in the slightest--most people tense before they spring, but Dick is at her most deadly when all her muscles go loose and easy. “So you’re just a little lost boy from Gotham.”

“Nothin’ special,” Jason agrees. “Not like you, huh? Do you consider yourself a Gothamite, Robin?”

Dick’s weight shifts, her scowl pronounced and unmistakable. Still got that temper, then. “Think you got me confused for a skinny teenager with bad hair.”

Jason snorts, amused. He takes a long easy drag. “His stick’s bigger than both of yours put together.”

“Sure,” Dick says, and she’s grinning again now, quicksilver bad mood vanished like it was never there. “But it’s not about the size of your ship. It’s about the motion of your ocean.”

Jason shakes his head at her, but he’s smiling. “You never answered my question. ‘Bout Gotham.”

“Gotham’s Gotham,” Dick says, which has no meaning for anyone not from Gotham. “Where else would Robin be from?”

“Way I hear it, the circus is from all over.” Dick’s moving at him before he’s finished the last word, the cigarette falling as it bounces off the warehouse roof. He parries her first blow but her second clips him across the jaw, the fortified knuckles of her gauntlet ringing off the metal of his helmet. He turns, catching her in an armbar, and she flips off his chest with both feet, twisting out of his grasp and landing in a crouch a few feet away. “Easy,” Jason tries, but she pulls her sticks, both this time, and when she rotates her wrists they crackle with blue electricity. 

He’s half a mind to retreat, but she doesn’t give him the chance. She closes faster than he thought she would--he’s bigger and heavier and stronger, and when she’d been Robin she’d been adept at close combat but wary of it, knowing her size and stature put her at an automatic disadvantage. Stupid, he curses himself, rapidly giving ground against her flutter of pointed jabs, stupid to assume she hasn’t altered her fighting style. Her elbow hits his temple hard enough to make his whole head ring and he snarls, slamming a knuckle into the cluster of nerves high in her outer thigh.

She retreats, limping on a dead leg, but she’s smiling, a dangerous twist of her lips and a trickle of blood from her upper lip down her chin. If he could see those blue eyes he’d bet they’d be dancing. She licks the blood away, then drags her tongue across her teeth, staining them red. “I’m going to hurt you,” she promises, and Jason feels it like a green spark in his chest. 

“No,” he chokes out, stumbling away. He presses his hand against the side of his head, unable to feel the pressure through the helmet. “ _No_ ,” he says again, to himself. Not here. Not to her. He can feel his heartbeat in the roof of his mouth, he can hear the blood rushing in his ears.

He closes his eyes and slips into himself--he used to try those meditation techniques Bruce made him learn, the ones he always hated, but nothing had worked until Talia dragged him off his cot, sweaty and hallucinating, threw him into an icy lake, and wouldn’t let him come out until he could inhale and exhale to a count of seven. Inhale, hold, exhale. He can hear her voice, steady and commanding, the crispness of her Arabic. 

He opens his eyes. The colors seem sharper, the noises louder. He can hear Dick breathing, and when he looks up she’s crouched in front of him, out of striking range but only just. Her sticks are stowed away again, which is six kinds of stupid. He should be twitching at her feet hogtied after the loss of control he just had, not catching his breath while she waits him out, quiet and understanding and--holding out a water bottle for him, Jesus Christ. “You’re definitely not from Gotham,” he rasps, rising to his knees before settling back on his haunches. He wishes he could wipe the sweat out of his eyes. 

She leans in, setting the bottle down before withdrawing out of reach again. “Nah,” she says softly, “this here is pure Gotham.”

He takes the water. “There’s no way for me to drink this, you know.”

“Real ugly under there, huh?”

Jason almost smiles. “Worst mug on the coast. Doin’ you a favor, wearing this thing.”

“Do me another favor and drink all that after I leave.”

“That’s it?” Jason drops that he knows she used to be Robin, which may or may not be public knowledge, and then that she’s from the circus, which is absolutely not public knowledge and a hint that he knows who she is under that domino. “No interrogations?”

“Not this time,” Dick says cryptically. “Seeya round, Red Hood.” She grapples away.

Jason watches her until she disappears into the night. Then he crawls into a secluded corner and fumbles at the catches of his helmet, letting it fall carelessly. The night air ruffles through his hair, sweat drenched and flattened, and he drags his hand across his face before draining the water dry in four long gulping swallows. Red Hood, she’d called him. 

There’s definitely someone on the other end of that line. And that someone is in Gotham.

++

Jason’s not one to look in a mirror and talk to himself. He’s not one to look at himself in the mirror at all. He hadn’t had access to one until he’d returned to the States, and he’d done an honest to god double take in the airport bathroom, that shit gritty soap on his hands while he gaped at his own reflection. He’d held that image of himself as unchanging, his cheeks still slightly rounded, the carefully mussed dark hair slick with expensive pomade--the same one Bruce used. He doesn’t know why he’d expected to look just the same all these years later, but he’d been unprepared for the sharp angles of his cheekbones, the stubble on his jaw. The pure white streaks in his hair, grown ragged and unkept. And his eyes. He’d always had his mom’s eyes, before, a grey-blue that wasn’t as bright as Dick’s. Now they’re chips of green, sharp and cold. 

His old man had green eyes. 

So Jason avoids mirrors. It’s not like he needs them, with the helmet. 

Except that Pete Haskell doesn’t wear a big red helmet. So Jason grits his teeth and doesn’t meet his own eyes and shaves in his new shithole apartment. And maybe talks to himself a little bit. “You fucking moron,” he tells himself, rubbing some shit aftershave across his cheeks and jaw. “Going back after you swore you wouldn’t.”

“It’s part of the plan,” he tries to convince himself while he’s brushing his teeth. “Gotta figure out who’s whispering in her ear.”

“Maybe you’re just a fucking moron,” he says with a sigh, and pulls on a jacket. It’s ten minutes to ten on a Tuesday and Dick’s gonna walk him home.

++

Dick’s finishing up when he gets there, and he lingers just inside, watching her. She’d said kids class, last time, and he’d wondered what the hell kind of tumbling class had kids out at ten on a schoolnight. A little bit of truth but not the whole truth, he learns now, which is such a Bruce move it makes him roll his eyes. She might teach kids on the weekends or in the afternoon, but nights are self-defense, and her class is all adult women. Jason knows a working girl when he sees one, and Dick’s got a collection of almost twelve practicing escape moves and groin hits. 

They cut him a mean look going by, until Dick wanders over with a towel around her neck and knocks their shoulders together. “Ladies, this is Petey, I told you about him. I’m walking him home.”

The looks turn assessing, and there’s some hushed whispering in Dick’s ear. She pinks, and Jason almost chokes on his own spit. “Not like that,” he says, and his put on stutter has become genuine. “Not like that!”

“Sure honey,” A woman with bright red nails tells him. “You just keep that thought in your head and your hands to yourself. Unless she wants you to move them.” She winks, sashays away.

Jason is an emerging gang lord on a mission of vengeance. He’s above blushing at barely-there hints of sexual activity. Petey isn’t though, so this blush is one hundred percent cover and nothing else.

“Ready?” Dick asks, after the last semi-threatening glare has been shot Jason’s way and the girls have shuffled out. “Work go okay?”

“Security,” Jason tells her. “Boring as all hell and my feet hurt, but the pay’s decent.”

Dick locks up and they start off down the street, slow and almost meandering. It’s been two days since their scrap at the docks, and he knows she should have a bruise in the shape of his fist on her left cheekbone. It strikes a chord in him, stirs a memory: Dick at thirteen standing on the closed toilet lid blending heavy concealer across Jason’s jaw before they went off to school.

“Where’s your head?” Dick’s voice jars him out of the past. 

“Sorry. Not good company, huh?”

“Not what I meant,” Dick disagrees gently. “I don’t mind a quiet walk, but I also don’t mind getting to know you better. You know, so I can decide how hard I want to defend you if we get jumped.”

“Ouch. My natural good looks aren’t enough?”

Dick stops dead on the sidewalk, and rakes her eyes up and down at him. She looks at him through her lashes, the edge of her mouth curling up and the point of her tongue peeking out between her teeth. Dick’s always been--there was a reason Jason was so sharp eyed at her running around in spandex and having sleepovers with the West kid and that Superman clone. There’s always been something about her, something effortless that moved into something effortful and probably, knowing her and knowing Bruce, weaponized with age. She’s take notice, take two looks and then look again, drop dead attractive. 

Then she laughs, and socks him in the shoulder. “Careful Petey. I’ll start to think it really is like that.”

Jason rolls his eyes, knowing he’s blushing again. “Yeah, yeah. One guy versus thirteen girls who just finished eye gouging drills. It was a real fair fight.”

“Boo hoo,” Dick says, dripping with fake sympathy. “It’s so hard being a straight white man.”

“I ain’t straight,” Jason says, and surprises himself with the admission. He hasn’t--hasn’t _really_ thought about Roy in years. Not in how he used to feel, anyway. He’s missed Roy, missed the camaraderie and the stupid jokes and the feeling of someone he trusts at his back. 

“Hey,” Dick says, and it should be awkward but it isn’t. “I get that. It’s gucci.”

“Gucci,” Jason repeats dryly, not without pain, and Dick laughs, head thrown back and eyes closed. 

“My brother was,” Dick starts, and then stops, her face flickering. “Sorry, everyone must do that, bring up their gay whoever like you’re supposed to all know each other.”

Jason has no idea. He’s never actually had a single conversation about it. “Yeah,” he says instead, because here’s something he does want to dig into. “Your brother was gay?”

Dick sticks her hands into her jacket pockets, her shoulders drawn up around her ears. “I… don’t know, actually. I know he liked a boy, when we were kids.” Her mouth twists. “We didn’t get a chance to talk about it. He died pretty soon after.”

Jason has about sixteen hundred questions he’s dying to ask, but he can’t figure a way to ask any of them. So they walk in silence for another two blocks. “I’m sorry,” he says belatedly, realizing that’s the normal response here. “About your brother.”

Dick shrugs. “Life, right?”

“Still.”

Dick turns her head away, her arm coming up like she’s wiping at her eyes. When she turns back her eyes are clear. “How about you? Got family knocking around Gotham still?”

“Of a sort,” Jason says vaguely. “My parents aren’t around anymore, but that happened a long time ago.”

“Hey,” Dick says, and she’s smiling again, even if it’s a little bit forced. “Dead parents club.” She holds up her hand for a high-five. “Don’t leave me hanging, it’s an orphan faux-paus.” 

Jason smacks their palms together, smiling back. “You’re something else, kid.”

“Oh yeah, and you’re a big grandpa. I get it, you’re gay and you don’t want me to hit on you.”

“Not gay,” Jason corrects, which is a classic dumbass move the likes of which he’d hoped he’d left behind. “Just sayin’,” he adds, which is actually worse. 

Dick looks at him again, just like that, the flutter of her lashes against her cheek and her jacket is leather and her shirt is bluejay blue and there’s calluses striped across her palms and she’s his little fucking sister, for fuck’s sake. “So I’ve got a chance, is what you’re saying?”

Jason changes the track of his thoughts. It’s the best in on Bat intelligence he could hope for, and he can keep it PG-13 if he puts his back into it. “Maybe,” he says, and gives her a curl of his lips and a fluttered eyelash right back. 

They slow to a stop outside the apartment complex. “Same time same channel?” Dick asks.

“Sure,” Jason agrees, and then he’s got an armful of her, warm and gently hugging him chest-to-chest.

“Sorry,” she says, without disengaging. “You always just kinda look like you need a hug.”

Slowly, Jason brings one arm up, the other dangling awkwardly at his side. He loops it around her shoulder, very nearly hugging her back. “Thanks,” he mutters, when she gently pulls away. “Same time same channel.”

Dick’s hand slides around the nape of his neck before falling away, the light drag of her nails through his hair. “Same time same channel,” she echoes.

Jason watches her go, a small figure in an oversized jacket. He wonders if she’s off to patrol as soon as she can change. He takes his phone out of his pocket and pulls up the tracker he’d slipped into her pocket while they were hugging. Time to find out if she’s operating out of that little apartment or if she’s got separate headquarters.

++

He’s wary of breaking into her apartment, when he hasn’t had enough time to properly case the place. On the other hand, she’s already suspicious since their interaction and his following breakdown at the docks, and he’s already fucking died, what else does he have to lose?

He breaks into her apartment. Takes him a good twenty minutes to circumvent the alarms, and he’s not entirely convinced he got them all and she isn’t on a rip back through the city to kick his ass again. So he moves quick, and doesn’t bother trying to hide he was there. The kitchen is exactly what he expected: six packets of spicy ramen and two family sized boxes of kid’s cereal, a takeout box of old chinese food in the fridge with two single bottles of hard cider and an empty carton of milk. “Alfred wept,” he mutters, and tosses the milk carton into the trash.

Clothes are strewn from the front door to the bathroom, like she stripped them off and let them fall as she walked. Jason scoops up the jacket from where it’s lying half on the floor, half against the arm of the couch--the couch which was clearly dragged out of a garbage dump somewhere, for fuck’s sake--and removes the tracker from the pocket lining. He goes into the bedroom, and stops dead. 

There’s a mattress against the wall, the sheets mussed and blanket rumpled. The closet door is open, the hanging rod bare but t-shirts and jeans spill out of cardboard boxes stacked on the floor. “You’ve got a trust fund,” Jason grumbles, and hangs up the jacket. Leaning into the closet reveals a safe built into the wall, with security he’d need another three hours to even start to crack. That’s the mystery of where Dick keeps her vigilante gear solved.

Jason’s more interested in the footlocker shoved between the wall and the bed. The lock is well made but store-quality, and Jason pops it open in less than a minute. Then he almost falls on his ass in surprise. 

It’s a gun.

Nothing fancy, nothing slick and custom made like the pieces Jason carries. A standard nine millimeter sidearm; when Jason leans in and sniffs he smells gunpowder, fresh oil. Recently fired, recently maintained. Bruce would sooner play pattycake with the Penguin than allow Dick to sleep with a gun at her hip. 

Jason’s watch buzzes against his wrist, reminding him of how long he’s spent snooping. He turns, meaning to check the bathroom before he leaves, and stops dead in his tracks. On the floor, almost hidden by a haphazard stack of miscellaneous books: art and crime scene forensics and pop culture and a bodice ripper with a winking face drawn on the cover in sharpie… are three photographs, all in cheap mismatching frames, tilted so Dick can see them when she’s lying in bed. 

One is her parents, the photograph faded around the edges, Mary and John Grayson smiling up at the camera, a tiny bundle of a baby cradles between them. One is her old team, in civies, Wally and Dick’s faces smushed against each other while Connor glowers from a corner, Artemis and M’gann making bunny ears from behind him, Kaldur serenely smiling with his arm extended to hold the camera.

The last is Jason. Jason and Dick from that ski trip, the mountain rising up behind them and their baby-fat faces, their bodies swallowed up by parkas. Jason’s fingers shake when he touches the frame, and he’s shoving it into his jacket before he can talk himself out of it. 

He sticks his head into the bathroom on his way out the living room window--cop uniform hanging on the back of the door, which at least explains the gun, although not why she feels like she needs to sleep with it within reach, a couple of products spread out across the sink.

He draws a songbird on her mirror in moisturizer. Streak of lipstick across the chest of it and it’s unmistakable. A robin in flight.

++

He goes back to Gotham, slips into the most secure safehouse he’s got. No hot water or electricity, but the shower and toilet work and a generator takes care of the rest. His set up isn’t a whole lot more impressive than Dick’s, but at least his clothes are folded and he tosses his takeout containers when he’s done with them. He checks in with his junior lieutenants, who are busy making as much trouble for Batman as loudly as possible, and then with a few of his senior lieutenants, who are more Talia’s than his own.

Batman’s taken out more of his people than he expected. It doesn’t matter, because none of his plans could be described as especially longterm, but it is irritating. Maybe it’s time to ruffle some feathers right back.

Jason drags a crate over next to his bed. Buffs the smudges off the glass of the photograph with his sleeve and sets it down, just so.

The he goes to find Robin.

++

Batwoman finds him first. He’s always gotten along with Kate, even when he and Bruce had fought so hard they’d almost brought the mansion down around their ears. She’d been the one to drag his dumbass teenage self to a gym and set him up with a punching bag just for the sake of raging, not training. His intelligence said she’d be out of the country, attending to something in Hong Kong, and he’s pissed that she’s caught him off-footed.

It takes him six blocks and a hastily arranged bank robbery, but he manages to ditch her in the financial district. He loops back, headed to the eastside factories along the river. 

Batman’s waiting for him. He and Kate must talk more than they used to. No flutter of yellow at his side, so Robin’s either benched or tucked somewhere out of sight. 

Jason lands on the opposite edge of the rooftop, leaving almost fifty yards between them. “I expected this conversation to happen sooner,” he muses, tapping his fingers against the outside of one leg. “Slipping in your old age, huh?”

“Red Hood,” Batman says. “You’re a hard man to track down.”

“Maybe you’re just a shit detective,” Jason shoots back. “Where’s your little birdie? We didn’t finish bonding before you interrupted, last time.”

“Stay away from Robin,” Batman growls. “And stay out of Bludhaven.”

“Now,” Jason says, affecting an air of wounded innocence. “Why would a proud citizen of Gotham like myself be caught dead in that rat trap?”

Batman doesn’t respond.

Jason lets his stance widen, then relax, like he’s enjoying the view of the river. “There is one thing that’s caught my eye, in the ‘Haven. Call me a magpie, but I always notice a little bit of blue.”

Batman throws an exploding batarang at his face. 

Jason dodges it, his laugh grating and distorted through the helmet. “There it is, Bats. Never got how people used to figure you for emotionless.”

Batman closes the distance between them and Jason’s been training with the world’s best most deadliest but he’d forgotten, just a little bit, that there’s a reason why the League hasn’t managed to get their hooks into Gotham. Batman lands two hits on him, in succession, and Jason has to aim a dirty kick at his ankle to catch his breath. Batman is strong and he’s fast but Jason’s not a gangly teenager in spandex anymore. He’s so surprised to find that he’s a hair faster than the Batman himself that he misses the window of opportunity to use it to his advantage.

Batman compensates by leaning into his superior strength, and the next punch that lands on Jason’s ear sends his whole head ringing, leaving him crumpled on the ground. He tosses a handful of projectiles, driving Batman back, and lurches to his feet. “Sore subject, huh? Do you worry about her, so far from you? Or do you think she wouldn’t even call, if she needed it? How many of your kids are you going to let bleed out before you do something about it?”

Batman roars. He goes straight through the knife Jason throws at him, taking the hit against his shoulder with a grunt. The hilt is sticking out from his armor when his gauntlet smashes into Jason’s jaw. Jason grunts, his head rebounding off the concrete with a painful bounce. He scrambles, reaching for--for his gun, for his calm, for his rage. He can’t grasp any of it, barely able to conjure the faintest green haze around the edges of his vision before Batman hits him again, the same place. 

No threats, no ultimatums, no growls. A fist into his face, over and over--a brutal kick to the arm Jason’s using to hold himself up and he can feel the bone in his wrist snap. He bites down hard to stifle his cry and tastes blood. Another strike to his jaw and the helmet shatters, a quarter of it falling to the ground and leaving his cheekbone and mouth exposed. Finally, his fingers close around the grip of the small revolver in his ankle holster and he presses it right up against Batman’s chest, pulling the trigger twice.

The shots make Bruce stagger--his kevlar’s state of the art but it’s still twenty two millimeters of pure force straight into his torso--his breathing goes pained and choppy. Jason pulls himself to his feet, strumbling, and spits a mouthful of blood at Bruce’s face. It sprays out, dotting his cowl and splattering on the ground. Jason takes off at a limp, throwing himself off the rooftop and almost dropping his grappling gun when his fingers fumble on the trigger.

Batman doesn’t pursue, which is a gift in and of itself. Jason drags himself across the city, spitting blood and trying to figure out if his jaw is dislocated. He crawls through the window of his safehouse, collapsing onto the ground with a groan before stumbling to the bathroom, leaving the remnants of his helmet on the tiled floor while he uses the sink to pull himself to his feet.

He looks terrible. He checks for dislocation with his fingers, exhales in relief to find none. Then he rinses his mouth with tepid water, spits out the mouthful of mostly blood into the sink, and sets his wrist with the sleeve of his jacket stuffed in his mouth to muffle the noise. He crunches up three oxycodone and manages to make it to the bed, collapsing into the cheap linens. He passes out with a grateful sigh.

++

Jason remembers: the first time he got to leave the compound, right after the pit. He was sweaty and shaky when they dragged him onto the plane, and he drifted in and out of consciousness to the low humming whine of the jet engines.

When he was aware again, he was standing on a rooftop. It was Gotham, he knew it in the smell on the air and the settling in his bones. Gotham always welcomes her own back home.

“ _Muharib_ ,” Talia called him, and pulled him over to the edge. “ _Nazar_.” She handed him a pair of binoculars, held them when his hands trembled. 

He looked, he saw: Batman dragging the Joker behind him down the street. They both looked roughed up; Batman’s cape was missing and the left ear of the cowl scorched away, walking like his ribs were hurting. The Joker even worse off, unconscious and bloodied, the purple of his suit darkened by blood and dirt and ash.

“Your loyalty goes unreturned,” Talia told him, in English. It was the most gentle he’s ever heard her be. “His cowardice perpetuates the rot.”

“He doesn’t kill,” Jason said, but his voice broke, lost and weak on the breeze. 

“He’s not from Gotham,” Talia murmured, right in his ear. “You are. What does your city need?”

Jason watched Bruce hand the Joker over to the police, and disappear into a shadow without looking back. The Joker will escape again; he always does. Two Face will get out again, no scars from the beating he laid down on Dick when she was nothing but a slip of a child believing in justice. Believing that Batman would find her before she got hurt. 

It started to rain. Cold icy drops that ran down Jason’s face, his hair, the back of his shirt. He used to love Gotham after it stormed, the crisp smell of concrete scrubbed clean, the streets flushed of garbage and the windows free of dirt. What does Gotham need, in the Narrows where he was born, the apartment where his mother overdosed, the mafia infighting that stole Dick’s family and childhood away, the alley where Jason died. “A cleansing,” he rasped, and felt the curve of Talia’s smile against his own cheek.

++

It’s three days before Jason feels up to doing anymore than eat a protein bar and use the toilet. He stays attached to his phone, keeping his operations going. 

On the third day, a package sails through his window, breaking the glass and sending his alarms wailing. He curses, gun in his hand while he stumbles over to turn the alarms off and glare out the broken window. He tapes a tarp over it with a mutter, takes six advil at once, and opens the box. 

Three syringes, lined up in a row with a curl of rubber hose around them. The liquid inside glows very faintly green. 

Jason exhales, long and shuddering. He wraps the hose around his arm, above his elbow, squeezes his hand into a fist. “Just like momma used to do it,” he says to himself, and injects. He doesn’t feel the floor hit him as he collapses.

He wakes up in the shower, fully clothed. He leaves his clothes in the tub, shivering under the deluge of cold water. He finds some clothes that are cleaner than the rest, a spare helmet and fresh clips in a box of extra gear. He’s clean, he’s focused: when he looks in the mirror his bruises are gone and wrist doesn’t hurt. His eyes are green. 

“So,” he says aloud. “Dickie’s a cop.”

++

She’s still at the Academy, he learns, but she does training ride-alongs. Bludhaven must be strapped, to be sending out not yet graduated cadets into the field. But it does make it easier for Jason to arrange a meeting, one evening in the shit bit of town.

He waits until they go into an apartment building to answer a messy domestic call. Then he jacks all four tires, leaving the cruiser on cinder blocks and hiding in a nearby shadow to watch. The sun is hanging low in the sky by the time they emerge and then stop, gaping at the car. A passerby snaps a picture with their cellphone, snickering.

Dick’s training sergeant almost has apoplexy on the spot. Dick takes a long look at the car, eyes narrowed, and Jason wonders if he’s tipped his hand too far. Or if Bruce has finished running a DNA test on the blood Jason spit on him and immediately broadcast it through the entire caped community. It’s not a move Jason would expect from him, but he also didn’t anticipate Bruce literally beating the helmet off his face.

The sergeant says something to Dick, clipped and harsh, and stalks off down the street towards the liquor store on the corner. Dick moves around the car, crouching to check out the undercarriage before slowing to a stop just outside the mouth of the alleyway Jason is hiding in. “Petty,” Dick says, almost like she’s talking to herself. Then she looks directly at him. “Did you seriously clean out my fridge?”

Jason steps out of the shadow. “You clearly weren’t going to do it.”

“Pretty creepy, Red.”

“Oh,” Jason says, “nicknames already? You can’t see it, but I’m blushing.”

“Yeah? You got these tires in that blush too?”

Jason jerks a thumb back behind him in the alley. “All stacked up pretty for you, don’t say I never got you nothin’.”

Dick rolls her eyes. “Is there a reason for this social call on work hours?”

“You carry a gun,” Jason says, and it’s not quite a question.

Dick blinks. “ _You_ carry a gun,” she shoots back. “Every idiot in this city running around at night carries a gun. What’s your point?”

Jason crosses his arms. He doesn’t have a point, because he’s not actually against her carrying a gun. He’s just pissed it managed to surprise him. “Figures you’d be a cop,” he mutters. Figures that she stepped right up and tried to be the good daughter, the rule follower, the Girl Scout with the tragically dead brother who disobeyed orders and got what he deserved for it. “Bet Daddy just loves that.”

“It’s a fantastic photo op,” Dick agrees lightly, and her refusal to engage--there’s absolutely no way Bruce is okay with her becoming a police officer and a zero percent chance he’d ever allow it to be used in Wayne Enterprises press--is really starting to piss Jason off. “You should see me in dress blues.”

“Blue does seem to be your colour.”

Dick stiffens. She takes her hat off and sets it on the hood of the cruiser. “I have a bone to pick with you, Hood.”

“Get in line.”

Dick smiles. She takes off her tie--a clip on, which offends fashion sensibilities Jason didn’t even know he had--and drops it atop her hat. “Not one for lines, me.” She crouches, and starts to undo her laces. “You took something,” she says, softly. Dangerously. She steps out of one shoe, than the other. “That belongs to me. And I want it back.” She strips her socks off and tucks them into her shoes.

Jason steps back despite himself. Surely she’s not about to throw down with him in her civilian identity, barefoot and in daylight no less. “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

“Liar,” Dick says simply, and launches. Jason hops backwards, over two steel barrels, and Dick goes up, taking three steps along the wall before dropping back to the ground without breaking her stride. 

“You’re gonna get tetanus,” Jason pants, retreating back into the alley and drawing his grapple gun. 

Dick advances, shoulders set and eyes narrowed. “I’m vaccinated,” she retorts, and leaps forward. 

He escapes her grab by a hair, her fingers brushing his sleeve as he grapples away. He hits the roof running, not bothering to check behind him. She’s barefoot, she’s in civies, she’s--closing on him. “Shit,” Jason mutters, putting on a burst of speed and cursing as he hears her footsteps behind him, matching and then exceeding his pace. It’s getting to the point where even Jason thinks she might have a little meta in her. 

He hangs a hard right, headed for a safehouse he’s willing to burn. He almost doesn’t make it, launching himself at the rooftop and feeling a weight slam into him mid-air. He turns, taking the brunt of the window against his shoulder, and they crash into a loft in an explosion of broken glass. 

Dick, who’s got to have about a hundred tiny cuts and lacerations, doesn’t skip a beat. She tries to knee him in the crotch, hitting his thigh instead when he twists to block her, then grabs his head in both hands and slams it down into the floor. 

He kicks her in the chest, forcing her off him and back into the far wall. She jerks, doubling over with a hand pressed to her ribs, and he remembers that his boots have steel in them and she’s not even wearing a bulletproof vest, nevermind the extra strength state-of-the-art weave of her Nightwing suit. If he’s cracked or broken anything, she’s not letting it slow her down. 

“Hold on,” he says, dodging a kick aimed at his knee, and a palmstrike headed for his throat. “Hold _on_!”

Dick reaches over and slams a cheap wooden chair onto the floor, picking up one of the jagged legs and spinning it in her hand. “No,” she says simply, and they’re fighting again.

She had the drop on him, Jason has to admit. Faster than even he gave her credit for, caught him in full kit on the rooftops without shoes and in khakis, but now they’re almost ten minutes into a scrap and her disadvantages are starting to catch up. She can’t move how she wants to in a button shirt and pressed pants, he can tell, and she hasn’t got the armor she’s used to. By comparison, Jason’s got supernatural steroids humming through his blood and kevlar taking the sting out of her hits. 

He knocks the stick out of her hand, then elbows her right where he’d kicked her. The breath goes out of her in a whoosh and she gasps, stumbling sideways. Jason grabs her by the collar and shakes her like a bad puppy. “I said hold on and I _meant_ it.”

“Fuck you,” she wheezes, and bites his wrist hard enough to draw blood.

“Fucking _ow_ ,” Jason sputters, tipping them both over onto the floor, where his size will allow him the grappling advantage he needs to pin her down and make her stop and listen for a second. In theory, it’s a perfect plan.

In practice, Dick Grayson has no fucking bones. She twists out of every hold almost faster than he can switch them, her legs hitching up and her hands scrabbling at his helmet, trying to gouge his eyes out through the metal through the force of pure rage or something, Jason doesn’t know. All his attention is focused on keeping the octopus masquerading as a human vigilante down on the ground. 

Her nails drag sharply across his faceplate and he abruptly realizes she isn’t futilely trying to injure him, she’s trying to find the clasps to undo the helmet. He grabs her by the waist and throws her across the room in a burst of speed and strength she can’t counter. She hits the far wall with a solid thunk and when she falls to the ground she doesn’t move. 

Jason sits up, panting. “Shit. Are you dead?”

Dick groans. 

“Good.” Jason looks at his wrist, which is bleeding sluggishly in the shape of Dick’s teeth. “God, you’re such a brat.”

“Fuck you,” Dick mutters. She makes it halfway upright before slumping back against the wall. “Give me my picture back, you creep. What do you even want it for?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jason replies blithely. “All I did was toss your old milk and hang up your jacket, and this is the thanks I get?”

Dick makes it to her feet, her hand braced on the wall for balance. “Give me a second, I’ll arrange something more exciting.”

“Raincheck,” Jason says, and flings a bola at her ankles before jumping out a window. For about half a second, he’s convinced he’s in the clear. Then a line closes around his ankle. “Well,” Jason tells the world at large, still in freefall. “This is going to hurt.” The line goes taut, jerking his entire body out of its graceful arc. He slams into the exterior wall with a grunt of pain, scrabbling at the brick with his fingertips. The line jerks again, fire spreading up from his ankle. He kicks out, fumbling over to an open window and flinging himself through it. The line goes completely loose, and he pulls it away, tossing it aside as he rubs at the injured joint and hobbles to his feet. 

Dislocated, he thinks, but he doesn’t have time to deal with it, because he’s only one floor down from Dick, and if she’s mobile enough to fucking lasso him out a window she’s mobile enough to handle a single flight of stairs and a short hallway.

For about fifteen seconds, all he hears is the tinkle of broken glass settling against the floor, the outside traffic going by, plaster dust fluttering in the air. His ankle throbs and his pinky is broken; he’s annoyed that his replacement helmet doesn’t have infrared. 

Then he catches a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. He whirls around, then gapes. “Come on,” he growls, exasperated. “This is bordering on ludicrous.”

“Skeet skeet,” Dick says, which is absolutely the most offensively embarrassing utterance Jason’s ever heard her make. Instead of taking the stairs like any normal or even giftedly abnormal person, she’d crawled out, scaled the side of the building, and entered through the window. She drops lightly to the floor, and slides into a fighting stance. 

“Okay,” Jason says, hopping backwards on his injured foot and holding out his hands, placating. “Okay, fine, yes. I took the picture, Jesus. It’s not worth all this.”

Dick shifts her weight. “Give it back.”

“I don’t have it on me.”

Dick scoffs.

Jason props his arm on his hip. “And why would I be carrying it around?”

“Why did you take it,” Dick shoots back.

“To mess with you,” Jason lies. “Took it at random, didn’t know you’d go all Terminator on me to get it back.” Dick doesn’t look convinced. “It’s not like you had a lot of personal effects lying around.”

Dick frowns, but stands up straighter, dropping her hands to her sides. “And I’m supposed to trust you’ll just bring it by later out of the goodness of your heart?”

“I do know where you live.”

“I don’t think that’s as strong of an argument in your favour as you think it is.”

Jason winces. “Any chance you’d believe Scout’s Honour?”

Dick glowers at him. “I’ll be at the docks at one. Don’t be late. You don’t want me to come looking.”

Jason makes an _x_ across his heart with his index finger. “Docks at one.”

Dick nods once, sharp. Then she climbs back out the window, the absolute lunatic.

 

Jason pops his ankle back in, uses up an entire roll of tape wrapping it up. Shoves it into his boot and yanks the laces as tight as he can. He stands, testing his weight; it holds. He drains an entire bottle of water and splashes a little more across his face before putting the helmet back on. He’s gotta get across town, retrieve the picture, make a copy, and get to the docks early enough to see Dick arrive.

++

All that and he doesn’t even beat Dick to the docks. She’s waiting on a warehouse rooftop, binoculars held up and her back turned to him. He lands lightly and makes his way to just to the left of her shoulder. “Anybody tell you you’re real annoying?”

Dick doesn’t look away. “It’s been said. Did you bring it?”

Jason takes the picture out from where he’d stowed it in his jacket and taps his fingers on the glass. “Safe and sound.” 

“Hold these,” Dick orders, and trades the binoculars for the picture. She pops the frame open, slipping the picture out and flipping it over. She turns so Jason can’t see but he catches some kind of writing scrawled across the back of it. When she turns back, it’s hidden away in the frame again. “Good,” she says. “You can go now.”

“Do you have pockets in that thing? Because it’s pretty--” Jason coughs. “Not that I’m looking, or nothing.”

Dick glares at him. “We’re not friends. And if you try to break into my apartment again, I’ll crack that helmet open down the middle and really give you a face to be self conscious about.” She holds her hand out for the binoculars, but Jason brings them up to his own face instead. It’s hard to focus them through the helmet, but he manages.

Ten, maybe fifteen guys. Looks like a shipment coming in. “Guns,” he guesses.

Dick snatches the binoculars away. She’s still glaring. “Don’t tell me they’re yours.”

Jason makes a deeply offended noise. “In those outfits? My boys have style.”

“If they’re not yours, and you’re not going to help, why are you still here?” Dick kneels, tucking the picture into a small box. It beeps when she closes the lid, and she hides it under a crumbling bit of ledge. She stands, arching an eyebrow. “Well?”

“I’m here to help,” Jason says, without thinking. It’s almost worth the cringing embarrassment of being such a sad sack he’s willing to get his knuckles bloody just so Dick will talk to him a little more when Dick’s eyes go wide behind her domino. “Yeah,” he says, putting a little cocky in his tone. “Figure I owe you one, what with the wailing you did about some photo.”

“I release you from your obligation,” Dick says dryly. “If you really want to make my day, try a long walk on a short pier.”

“Ouch,” Jason says, mock wincing. “And I thought you bats didn’t kill.”

“You do,” Dick says, and her voice is deceptively light. “I hear you do a whole lot.”

Jason stills, the teasing mode broken. “And who’s singing in your ear, birdie? The big man himself?”

Dick snorts. “I haven’t spoken to Batman in years. Are you going to call me moll, or can we cut the bad mobster slang?”

“Sure thing, daddy-o,” Jason replies, a wink in his voice. Then he jumps, grappling away before she can stop him. 

He doesn’t bother with stealth. He drops straight down on two of them at once. He sees Dick swooping in and cups his hands; she drops into the boost like they’d practiced it a hundred times, springing forward into a double kick that would leave Jason wincing in sympathy if he gave a shit about gunrunners. “No killing,” she snaps, and then they’re overtaken.

They’d fought together, before. Jason remembers it, remembers the high five they exchanged after the very first time, Dick streaked in sweat and exhaustion shining through the exhilaration, her palm thumping against his, the drag of their gloves against each other. 

This time he can feel his blood singing. He can hear her breathing, over the grunts and curses and thumps of hard hits landing home. Jason shifts, quicksilver fast, and sticks a foot out in the path of a goon rushing at Dick’s flank. He trips straight into Dick’s knee, and drops to the ground with a crash, out cold. Dick’s grinning at him, sharp and victorious, and when they turn away from each other to continue the fight Jason can hear it, low and gleeful: Robin’s cackle.

 

Jason finishes before Dick does. He doesn’t rush to her aid, lingering to watch her in action. With Talia, he’d had a swordmaster trainer that would drag him to the river to watch the water rush around the stones. Dick fights just like that, liquid grace mixed with brutal efficiency, flowing around her opponent’s attacks like she’s dancing. It’s over before Jason’s tired of watching. 

Dick steps over the last prone body, stopping just short of Jason. She tilts her head at him. “You didn’t kill anyone.”

Jason shrugs. “Trying to keep my value as a mob wife high.”

“You’d look real pretty on my arm,” Dick says, and manages to wink through her domino mask. 

Jason blushes. Luckily, no one can see it. His tone is forcibly flippant. “You’ll break my heart if you’re not careful.”

“You’d live,” Dick says, and turns away. “Seeya around, Hood.”

Jason watches her go. “Seeya, Robin.”

++

“Your hair,” is the first thing Dick says to him, surprised. 

Jason brings a hand up. “What? Did a bird shit on me?”

“You’ve got, uh,” Dick actually blushes, deeper than Jason’s ever seen before. “I mean, it’s not bad, I just.”

Jason squints at his reflection in the dingy window. Oh. _Oh_. He’s a moron. The white is coming through, and he hadn’t even noticed. “Oh,” he says, groping for an excuse, a believable lie. “I--” his brain is one big blank.

“S’okay,” Dick assures him, rocking back and forth on her toes. “I get it.”

“You… do?”

“Yeah, sure, nobody likes finding a grey. If it helps, I think it’s sexy.”

Jason coughs, almost tripping over his own feet. “Yeah?”

Dick grins at him out of the corner of her eye. “Oh yeah.”

Jason drags a hand through his hair, self-conscious. His stomach rumbles. “You hungry?”

Dick blinks. “I could eat.”

Jason leads her to a hot dog stand on the corner. “My treat,” he says, exchanging a bill for two dogs with the works. 

They start walking again, quiet while they eat. Jason crumples up the wax paper into a little ball and shoves it into his pocket. “Have an okay week? I never, uh. Asked what you do.”

“Imma cop,” Dick says, around a mouthful of bread. She swallows. “In training, anyway.”

“Impressive. An middle finger to your old man?”

Dick laughs, surprised. She wipes her mouth on her sleeve and tosses her trash sideways without looking; it drops neatly into a streetcorner trash can. “Bruce isn’t my old man, I told you. Nothing between us but some childhood stuff I left behind.”

“Seems like if you wanted to be underappreciated and underpaid, Gotham PD was a shorter walk away.”

“Mm,” Dick agrees. “I needed a clean slate. I haven’t talked to anyone from Gotham in years now.”

“No one?”

Dick shrugs. “Who would I talk to?”

Jason frowns. Dick had attracted friends like flies to honey, social in a way that left Bruce exasperated. Her abruptly cutting ties doesn’t sit right with him. “Seems lonely.”

Dick bumps their shoulders together. “I get by.”

They slow in front of Jason’s building. “Thanks for the company,” Jason says. 

Dick goes up on her tiptoes, moving slow enough Jason could pull away. He doesn’t. Her lips brush his cheek, her breath ruffling through his hair. “Don’t dye it again, okay?”

“Okay.”

Dick smiles. “Good. Seeya on Tuesday.”

Jason goes up to his room. There’s a cheap print of the photograph, a picture of a picture Jason snapped with his phone, taped to the wall in the bathroom. Jason changes, taps his fingers against the picture as he leaves, their mismatched crooked smiles. 

Guns come in twos, sometimes in threes. Never in ones. Jason goes to the docks.

 

He’s creeping along an edge when he hears it, high and fluting and almost lost in the breeze coming in from the river: a robin’s song. He adjusts his course, flanking left. She’s waiting for him in a shadow. “You here to crash my party, Red?”

“Naw, Blue,” he drawls. “Just here to watch the lady work.”

“You’re so good to me,” she simpers, and flashes him a peace sign as she flips away. 

Jason moves close to the action, touching his helmet to make sure he’s recording. A cartwheel and two back handsprings before she even makes first contact, a flickering shadow with flashes of blue. She cuts through them like a hot knife through butter. And if he’s not mistaken, she’s flashier than she’s ever been before, off the ground more often than not. 

“Watch out for pier pressure,” she shouts gleefully, and smashes a man’s head into the wooden planks. 

Jason spies a shape converging on her flank--he flings a knife into it and watches it fall into the water. Dick lays out the last man with a move that ends with her in the full splits; she slides smoothly to her feet and bows like she’s at center ring. 

Jason golf claps. 

“Tell me,” Dick says, hips swinging, cheeks flush with victory. “That thing of yours make long distance calls? Local calls?”

“Sure. All that and I can check my email, too.”

“Call it in for me?”

Jason calls 911. “Golly gee,” he says in his best falsetto, when the operator picks up, “there’s all kinds of ruckus out here by the docks.”

Dick laughs.

“Lady,” the operator says, “is this a joke?”

Jason pulls his sidearm and discharges it twice into the ground, then ends the call. 

“Smooth.”

Jason reholsters the gun. “Gets the job done.”

Dick snorts. “Sure. So what’s the real reason you’ve tracked me down?”

Jason shifts on his feet. “A warning.”

Dick stills, head tilted at him. Her eyes narrow. “And what would that be?”

“Stay out of Gotham. It’s got nothing to do with you.”

Her lip curls. “You don’t have a say in what’s got to do with me.”

Jason glares. “Friendly neighborhood caution, that’s all it is. You stay out of Gotham, and I’ll steer clear of your ‘Haven.”

“And if I don’t?”

Jason rests a hand on the grip of his gun. 

Dick snarls at him. “Shoulda known,” she says coldly, turning away. “Pretty weak play, Hood. Didn’t get me on the hook hard enough for that to sting.”

“Didn’t know you were biting.”

She flashes a grin at him, but there’s no warmth in it. “I’m taken anyway.”

Jason almost falls over with the breeze. _Taken_? “Just stay away,” he stutters. “There’s bigger things there than me.”

“Once in Gotham,” Dick says lowly, “always in Gotham. If you move against her, I’ll be there to stop you.”

She extends her grapple. 

“Hey,” Jason calls out, because he’s never been able to see her mood sour and not do something about it. “Pun for the road?”

Dick turns her head to look at him. Her mouth is flattened into a thin lipless line. Then it quirks up, so fast he could blink and miss it. “Go to shell,” she says, and grapples away, his laugh echoing after her. 

++

Taken.

It echoes in Jason’s head, and he finds himself outside her apartment on a Monday evening, in the hallway instead of crawling through the fire escape. She opens at the first knock. “Petey?”

He shuffles his feet. “Yeah, I uh. They told me down at the center, where you lived.”

It’s a thin excuse, but Dick seems to swallow it without any suspicion. “I talk about you sometimes.”

He blinks. “You do?”

“Sure,” she says slyly, “you wanna hear what they think of your salt n’ pepper?”

“Definitely not.”

Dick laughs. “Come on in.”

He steps into her apartment, looking around like he hasn’t seen it before. “Decent place.”

“It’s a rat trap,” Dick corrects, shoving a jacket off the seat of a wooden chair. “Here. You want something to drink?”

“Wouldn’t say no.”

Dick cracks two beers and hands him one, lounging against the wall. Jason glances around the apartment again. “You only got one chair?”

Dick looks a little sheepish. “Am I losing all my cool points?”

“Wouldn’t worry about it,” Jason says, leaning back in his chair. “You could take a pretty big hit and still have me beat by a mile.”

“You’re always so down on yourself,” Dick says, shaking her head at him. “Hey, I wanna show you something.” She trots off into the bedroom, coming back with something held in her hands. “Here.”

It’s the picture of the two of them, up on the mountain. “Your brother,” Jason says, tone pitched like it’s a guess.

Dick’s fingertip brushes over the younger Jason’s face. “His name was Jason.” Her breath catches. “It’s bad luck, you know, to say the names of the dead.”

“Yeah?” Their hands are brushing on the frame. “Says who?”

“My family. I’m Rom, you know, on my mother’s side.” Dick half-smiles. “Gypsy.”

“You speak it?”

“No.” Dick sets the picture down on the table, takes a long draw from her beer. “Not really, not… enough.”

Jason nods. “Nobody to speak it to, huh?” And why didn’t Bruce learn it, Jason thinks waspishly. He’d learned six or seven other languages, what was one more? Probably didn’t even occur to him. 

“I have a friend who’s fluent, actually.” Jason shuffles through his mental rolodex of Dick’s present and past associates. Connor is the only name that pops; didn’t that kid get the whole internet downloaded into his brain or something?

“How come you don’t speak it with him?”

Dick does smile then, something secret and sad about it. “Because he’s fluent.”

Jason drinks his beer to give his hands something to do. “I, uh. I came over because I didn’t.” He swallows, feeling nervous sweat prickle at his hairline. “I didn’t want there to be a misunderstanding between us.”

“Sure,” Dick agrees, and she’s very close, suddenly, leaning down towards Jason seated in the only chair. “Lay it on me.”

“Um,” Jason says. “I--”

She kisses him. Slow and soft and closed mouth, the press of her lips and the barely-there flicker of her tongue on his skin. “I like you,” she murmurs, still so so close. “I want you to like me. Is there a misunderstanding?”

“No,” Jason admits, his voice hoarse. He should keep talking, should say _but_ and let her down easy, or grit his teeth and spit something mean and let it go down in flames. But he stays silent, watching her smile light up her eyes. 

“Let me take you out to dinner tomorrow,” she proposes. “Since you paid last time.”

“Alright.” Jason stays there, body relaxed, beer dangling from his fingers, watching the little curl of her hair falling in her eyes. “You really like me?” What’s he been to her as Petey, except offensively bland? 

“I never talked about my brother to anyone before,” she admits. “Known you for less than five total nights and I said his name.”

“There’s an Indian place on the corner, two blocks past my place,” Jason says. “Been meanin’ to try it.”

Dick’s eyes crinkle at the corners. “It’s a date.”

 

She walks him out to the parking lot, shivering in the night air. Holds out a hand in a wave when he looks back before turning the corner. Alone and unseen, he touches his fingers to his mouth. It’s been--since Roy, cheap cigarette ash and skunk weed. Their kiss had been so fleeting and careful he’d tasted nothing of Dick at all. Even beyond that, he can still feel… the press of her legs against his, warm and soft and solid, her hand bracing herself on his shoulder, the curl of her fingers. Last time he’d been touched before that in a non-violent way was Talia’s hand on the back of his head when he’d kneeled before her and sworn to lay Gotham at her feet. 

(Before that was---he remembers---Bruce’s quiet murmur in his ear, the pride in it, the reassuring palm on his back while Alfred stitched a minor laceration on his calf.)

Jason chainsmokes three cigarettes in a row on his fire escape, fingers shaking. 

Then he ties the hose around his arm and flushes all his doubts away. Two out of three down, better make it count. 

++

He rampaged through Gotham, he learns when he wakes in an alleyway twelve hours later. _The_ alleyway, twelve hours later.

He remembers it in flashes, enough to piece together where he went but not enough to remember who all he’s killed. It’s easy enough to send out a few feelers and paint a rough sketch of what he accomplished during the haze.

He’d killed three out of the four major drug lords of Gotham. The big ones, the ones with international ties. The cops and the assorted bats will be scrambling to keep the power vacuum from devolving into full out guerilla warfare on the streets. Jason crashed through the established hierarchy of organized crime in Gotham like it was made of toothpicks. Even the lieutenants that belong to Talia look at him more warily. 

It’s to advance the plan, he tells himself in the shower, a swirl of dirt and grime sloshing down the drain. The fact that it frees him up to spend some time in Bludhaven is… inconsequential.

++

Jason learns that, along with everything else, the pits reset his sense of taste. He’s been eating mostly protein bars and granola; he’d handled that hotdog okay but he takes one bite of vindaloo and sneezes six times, eyes watering, throat burning.

Dick laughs at him. “White boy,” she teases, pressing a glass of water into his hand. “We should have told them mild.”

They’re at Jason’s place, sitting on a blanket on the floor with takeout containers spread out around them. “Never had it before,” Jason says, recovering with a grimace. 

“Jason had a sensitive palate,” Dick says, and her voice is so quietly fond, so deeply grieving. “He grew up eating mostly canned food, you know? He told me the first time he had a fresh vegetable he almost lost his mind.”

Jason stays quiet. He has no idea how a normal person would reply to that. “I think I’ll stick to rice,” he says, and Dick smiles at him like he’d said the exactly right thing.

 

He goes into the kitchen to throw all the trash away and she follows him to drink straight out of the tap. “Heathen,” he accuses, pulling her away from the sink by the back of her shirt. “I got glasses.”

Dick gurgles her mouthful of water at him, then swallows and sticks out her tongue. “I’m impatient.”

He leans around her to wipe his hands on a towel and she doesn’t move, their chests pressed together. “Thanks for dinner,” Jason says.

“No problem.”

Jason wants to touch the gentle slope of her neck, but his hands are big and clumsy and scarred along the knuckles, the sensations dulled in the stripes of gun calluses across his skin. Also, he’s a fucking pervert, apparently, and if the rest of what he’s done wouldn’t send him straight to hell this moment will, this full second when he sees her head tilt and her eyes close when he could have pulled away or turned his cheek.

Instead he doesn’t move and they kiss again, as slow as the first time until it isn’t. He’s got her pressed against the counter, her fingers are tight on his hips as she pulls him closer. Her tongue dragging against the sharp points of his teeth and she tastes like yellow curry and cheap beer. “Wait,” he mutters, and then she guides his hand into her hair and he’s thoroughly distracted. “Wait,” he says, abruptly present again.

She breaks the embrace, letting him step back. They’re both breathing harder, her pupils are dark and wide. “You okay?”

“I, uh. Got work in the morning.”

Dick blinks at him. He can’t blame her. 

“Real early in the morning,” Jason adds, like that adds any believability to anything at all.

“Okay,” Dick says gently. She kisses his cheek again and he can smell her deodorant, the shampoo in her hair. Her eyes are bluejay blue, there are very faint indents in her lips in the shape of his teeth. “Come over tomorrow. We’ll eat something bland.”

“Okay,” Jason agrees, and watches her leave.

++

Nightwing is meeting with someone. He can tell by the way she’s looking to see who’s looking. She’s good, but with preparation and dumb good luck, Jason’s there two hours before Nightwing arrives, and he’s got the perfect spot. He’d meant to scout out some places to plant a few bombs, throw up a ruckus to keep Dick in Bludhaven when the timer runs out in Gotham, and he’s surprised to see the little flutter of movement high up on the rooftops. He ducks into a shadow, checking his lines of sight, and then crawls up a metal storage container when she stills in the middle of the rooftop, clearly visible and not moving.

There’s a flash of red streaking through the air, crackling like lightning, and a man is on the rooftop with her. Jason pulls up the computer in his gauntlet, adjusts a few settings. It’s tinny and crackly, but his helmet can pick up what they’re saying. 

Which, honestly? Terrible covertness. Bruce would be livid.

“--sure? Please--” Flash is saying. Jason figures it’s Wally under those goggles, but he doubts he’s still going by ‘Kid’, tall as he’s apparently grown up to be. 

“--told you--never--back to Gotham.”

Jason fiddles with the settings. Some of the white noise fades away, leaving the voices clearer. 

“--don’t think it’s weird that he’s calling me over you? I’m not any happier about it than you are.”

“I wish nothing but the best for you and B,” Dick says flippantly. “I’ll send you some friendship bracelet designs. Hint: he likes black.”

Flash sighs. “So you’re not going to help me out. Major bro-code violation, I gotta tell you.”

Dick kisses his cheek, a little bounce up onto her toes and down again. “Kid Bats. It’s got a ring to it.”

Flash shakes his head at her, but his smile is visible under his mask. “Girl Menace was right.” He zips away, and Dick swings right behind him. 

Jason punches the crumbling edge of the roof so hard an entire shingle falls off. That was his nickname for her. 

++

He buys flowers on his way to Dick’s, one of those wilting roses the liquor store keeps up by the register. He throws it away a block after he buys it, cursing at himself and wiping the water droplets off on his pants. 

He raps on the door and she opens it, grinning at him. “Petey, hey, I--”

Jason steps into the apartment and kisses her, hand on the small of her back and the other smoothing through her hair. She rocks up to meet him, looping her arms around his neck. 

Someone coughs.

Jason freezes, breaking the kiss. “--have company,” Dick finishes, still grinning. “Come meet my oldest friend.”

If he just got caught macking on his sister in front of Superman, Jason will die on the spot. And stay dead, this time.

Thankfully, it’s just Wally West, standing in Dick’s living room looking unimpressed. Jason jerks his head in a nod. “Hey.”

“This is my friend Wally,” Dick says, closing the door and nudging Jason forward. “Wally, this is Pete. We met at the center.”

Wally extends his hand. “Hey.”

“Pleasure,” Jason says, and they shake. Wally squeezes hard enough it makes Jason want to roll his eyes, but he doesn’t react. 

“I was just leaving,” Wally says, pulling his jacket on. “Nice to meet you, though. Dick says good things.”

Jason raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

“No. She’s never mentioned you once.”

Wally dodges Dick’s retaliatory kick. “Text me when you get home,” Dick orders, and Wally raises a hand in acknowledgement as he closes the door behind him. She turns to Jason. “We’ve been best friends since we were kids.”

“An ex?” Jason is honestly curious. He figures it coulda gone either way.

“Meh,” Dick says, which is nowhere near as specific as an answer as Jason would like. “I’ve decided on something special for tonight,” she declares, grabbing his wrist and towing him over to the kitchen. 

“Oh?” 

Dick pulls open a cabinet and removes a cereal box with all the flourish of a matador. “Crocky Crunch,” she crows. 

“Disgusting,” Jason says honestly. 

Dick makes a wounded noise, splaying her palms over the box. “Shh,” she coos to it. “Don’t listen to the bad man.”

Jason laughs. He doesn’t recognize the sound of it, something lighter and softer than any noise he’s made in years. “You’re ridiculous.”

“It’s because you haven’t tried my world famous appetizer.” Dick reaches into the same cabinet and this time comes out with a bottle of scotch. 

Jason reads the label and raises an eyebrow. “You’ve been hiding that in there with that sugar trash this whole time?”

“Bruce had it sent over as a housewarming gift, even though I’d deliberately not told him the address and we hadn’t spoken in weeks. He had an intern send it; I could tell because they spelled my name wrong.”

“He may be an ass,” Jason says, taking the bottle from her hands and pulling the cork out with a pop. “But he’s got taste.”

He drinks, bold under the weight of her gaze, straight from the bottle. She watches his adam’s apple bob. Stuff this good deserves to be sipped, but as sins go it’s a long way away from the worst thing Jason’s ever done. Or planned to do. Or is currently doing, trading sips with Dick between lazy nuzzling kisses, the mouth of the bottle warm from her her tongue, the press of her chapped lips. 

He ends up on the sofa, a spring digging into his ass in a way that would be uncomfortable if the feeling wasn’t completely eclipsed by Dick, warm and slowly rocking on top of him. It feels good, in a way that doesn’t bear weight, doesn’t feel like a trade or a sacrifice. Maybe it should, but Jason shoves all those thoughts away. His name is Peter and there’s a pretty girl making pretty noises in his lap.

“Are you,” Dick tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, smiling a slow wicked smile. “Too drunk for this?”

“Not nearly drunk enough to eat that garbage cereal.”

Dick laughs; Jason takes the opportunity to nip the long expanse of her throat. 

“I’m serious,” she murmurs, winding fingers in his hair and tugging hard enough he makes a noise: soft and surprised and wanting. “Consent is serious.”

It’s an out, and Jason should take it. If there was anything left of who he was, he would take it. 

Instead he shakes his head, takes her hand. She leads him into the bedroom.

++

Jason remembers: holding out two little water wings and Dick’s highly offended expression. The way her voice squeaked when she said she wasn’t scared. Her swimsuit had tiny Batman symbols on them and he stood in the pool while she kicked her feet and clung to the wall and told him stories in a shaky voice about how they’d had a kiddie pool, in the circus, for the brutal summer days, but it was never big or deep enough for her to learn how to swim. 

The trust she had, to let go and stay afloat with only Jason’s hands on her, gentle and steering. Smelling like chlorine and eating ham sandwiches poolside, Dick giggling at the start of a sunburn on Jason’s nose. _Thanks Jayce_ , her high pitched child’s squeak and how she was so small tucked into his flank, stealing his cookies when she thought he wasn’t looking. The first time he really felt like a big brother.

 

He wakes up with Dick curled against his side, her leg wiggled under his and her face tucked into his shoulder. She snuffles in her sleep; the indent of his teeth in her throat is red and dark and slightly swollen. 

Jason almost runs into the wall getting away from her. He grips the doorframe so hard the wood creaks against his fingers, taking deep breaths. 

In her bed, Dick sits up, yawning. “Petey?”

The name hits him like a sucker punch. Sleep hazy and reeling from the dream--is it a memory or is it something he’s made up, all the fractured pieces of his mind playing puzzle tricks on him in his subconscious--he’s struck by the sight of her, the sheet pooled around her waist and her bare torso in the moonlight. And he’d honestly expected her to yawn, rubbing at the sleep in her eyes, and call him _Jay_.

“I gotta,” he says, and it’s like his voice is coming from very far away. “I gotta go. Got paged for an emergency shift.”

She squints at him. “You okay?”

He can do this. He was trained to do this, he died and trained again to do this. “Yeah. Other guy no-showed, that’s all. Good money, coming in this late.”

“Mmkay.” She curls up in the warm spot he’d left on the mattress, smushing her nose into the pillow. “Text me later?”

“Sure,” he says, and he even manages to walk over and kiss her cheek goodbye.

 

He’s violently ill into an alleyway three blocks away from her apartment, ignoring the jeering from a drug dealer sprawled across a stoop. He dials Talia with shaky hands. “I need an airlift,” he begs, when the line picks up. “I need--my head’s all fogged up, please. I need it.” Needs the sharp edged bite of it, the green glow that cuts away all the emotions that make him hesitate and _want_.

There’s a measured silence from the other end of the line, the only sounds Jason’s ragged wet breathing. “That wasn’t the deal,” Talia says, and hangs up.

 

When Jason can think again, there’s a dead man at his feet, a gun in his limp fingers, his eyes clouded. Jason’s stomach rolls, then steadies.

A dead drug dealer, he corrects himself, one less shadow lurking just across the street from an elementary school. He spits on the body and takes the gun with him when he leaves. 

++

His lieutenants are pathetically relieved to see him in Gotham again. They’ve done well in his absence, with only one clearly maneuvering for a move against him. He deals with it the way Talia taught him.

Then he sleeps for six hours, unmoving. He dreams of green galaxies and the barrel of his gun against Dick’s temple; wakes drenched in cold sweat. Being in his helmet settles him; being on the rooftops quiet him. Even a spam email trying to scam him into trading personal information in exchange for an all expenses vacation to Tahiti doesn’t sour his mood much, even though it’s more than just a little annoying it made it through all the filters he’s installed in his new helmet. Almost makes him miss the days it was just a simple metal mask, instead of loaded with whistles and bells and all the tech-related works. He laces his boots up and hits the rooftops. It’s quiet and dark and crisp; it’ll rain soon.

The peace is fleeting. He’s hardly scouted around the edges of his newly dug out territory when Batman tries to take his feet out from under him. He twists, log rolling across the slate, and draws the knife from his left boot to cut the bola away. He’s on his feet before Batman lands on the rooftop. “You really have missed me, huh?”

Batman is silent. 

Jason splays his arms out to his side, exaggerated. He bows. “You can’t blame me for the melodrama. Got ingrained in me at a young age. You know how it is.” Bruce can’t see the way he’s smiling under the hood, an angry snarling grimace. “ _Bruce_.”

“Jason,” Batman says, and his voice is hoarse. His hand comes up to his cowl, and when he speaks again, the voice modulator is off and it’s just Bruce. “Jason.”

Jason stills, the mocking vanishing from his body language. It’s something he should have anticipated, something he has anticipated, but it’s still--. No one’s called him Jason since he was eighteen years old. “Took you long enough, old man. So much for greatest detective.”

“DNA,” Bruce says simply.

Jason shrugs. “That’s what I figured, after I literally slapped you across the face with a sample. You work everything else out yet?”

“I failed you.”

Jason laughs. “No shit, Bats. They fed you a lie and you didn’t even ask a single question before swallowing it down. A little green paint and a few _ha has_ and you never even went looking for me.”

Batman’s fists are clenched. “They stole you from me.”

Jason snarls. “I am not a _thing_ that can be stolen.”

Batman’s chest is rising and falling more rapidly than it should be, considering the amount of effort he’s exerted, but his voice stays steady. “You blame me for your abduction.”

“No,” Jason corrects. “I blame you for everything else.”

Bruce pushes the cowl off, which is enough to make Jason draw up short. There’s smudged black shadow around his eyes, and stubble across his cheek. “Tell me,” he says, like he’s just picked Jason up from school after a fight and Jason’s almost bursting with the fact that no one bothered to ask the street kid’s side of the story. 

“I--” Jason catches himself falling into the same routines, the same dynamics. He curses, turning away and taking a deep breath.

Bruce waits him out. 

“Gotham,” Jason says, looking out at the glow of it, streetlamps and neon signs and the smell of the tide going out. “You’re not the hero it deserves, and you’re not the man it needs.”

“And you are? The League is?”

“Talia told me,” Jason says, looking at Bruce, the lines on his face and the tired slant to his determined shoulders. “She told me what they offered you that night.”

Bruce’s face tightens. “I don’t know what she told you,” he says coldly. “But if you agree with what they wanted, you are not the man you were.”

“I was a kid,” Jason snaps. “A kid who believed in _you_.”

Bruce starts to extend a hand to him, like that’s all it would take, like that’s how shallow he thinks Jason’s principles run. If he could reach, he’d slap it out of the air between them.

“I died,” he says, low and cold and relishing Bruce’s flinch. “I died and you didn’t come and save me, and that’s not your fault. But this,” he sweeps his hand out at the Gotham skyline rising up before them. “This perpetuates because you won’t do the dirty work to stop it.”

“If you’re with the League,” Bruce says, and his voice has gone Batman again. “I will stop you.”

“Take a vacation, Bruce,” Jason says, because there’s still a little kid somewhere inside of him that dreams about falling asleep on Bruce’s shoulder after the third viewing of a Star Wars movie, because they were his favourite and Bruce was capable of being indulgent if no one else was watching. “Go patch things up with Dickie, take Alfred to Paris, I don’t care. Stay away, and we’ll leave you alone.”

“Leave Dick out of this,” Bruce says sharply. “She doesn’t have to know what you’ve become.”

Jason advances three steps before he catches himself. Bruce is goading him. “Maybe,” he says, soft and vicious, “maybe _I_ want to see what she’s become.”

His helmet beeps, a small notification flashing in the corner of his HUD. In the distance, something explodes. 

Jason smiles. “You should probably check that out. Might be important.”

He can practically hear Bruce’s teeth grinding together. “Leave. Dick. Alone.” He’s gone in a swish of his cape, the warning lingering in the air. 

“Too late by half,” Jason mutters, and heads for the fire escape.

++

He waits for her in the Academy’s parking lot. Academy is a generous description, the building that trains Bludhaven’s future finest looks like a cross between a generic office building in a factory district and a prison in a third world country. It’s all dull grey concrete and barbed wire fencing, the parking lot paved roughly and the paint peeling from the sign. 

“God,” he says, when Dick spots him with a grin and jogs across the lot to greet him. “You sure you picked a winner to stick your stake in?”

Dick turns to survey the building, and beyond: the trash by the side of the roads and the missing street signs; there’s a glow around the corner that looks suspiciously like it might be from a trash can fire. “What? I think she has character.”

“The only thing she’s got is tetanus,” Jason tells her, and turns to hide the way he looks at her when she laughs.

 

They get Mexican. It’s Jason’s turn to pay, and he’s actually got enough cash to take her someplace nice, but Petey doesn’t, so they go to a taco truck behind a dive bar. Dick tells him about the Academy, some story about the guy who sits behind her and keeps trying to explain chain of custody to her like she didn’t have the entire rulebook memorized by age sixteen, courtesy of Bruce. Jason tells her about a cat that’s been slinking around his apartment and how he bought a can of wet food at the liquor store on the corner and left it outside his window. 

“Sap,” she teases and he shrugs, guilty. 

He knows what he has to do, and it’s not like him to drag his feet but… but there’s no harm in walking along the river with her, looking out at the water and the way the breeze ruffles her short hair. 

Who’s he kidding, he thinks, when he shrugs his jacket off and drapes it around her shivering shoulders, something settling in his chest when she tucks her face into the collar of it and smiles. He’s dragged his feet his whole goddamn life.

 

“Big deal,” Dick jokes, when they’re climbing the rickety stairs to Jason’s apartment. “Seeing your place.”

Jason shifts, fumbling for his keys in his pocket. “Is it?”

“Not really, since I’ve already had your dick in my mouth.”

Jason trips over his own feet and smacks his head into the doorjamb. “Jesus Christ.”

Dick’s still giggling when he closes the door behind them. “You’ve got a mark,” she says fondly, licking her thumb and wiping at his forehead. She slides her hand sideways, ruffling his hair. He feels a little prick and she holds up a single white hair in front of his eyes. “Don’t say I never did nothin’ for you.”

“One down,” he says wryly, “a hundred to go.” He takes the hair from her, balancing it on a finger tip, and holds it up to her face. “Make a wish.”

Dick blows the hair away. “I wished for good sex,” she tells him, and waggles her eyebrows.

Jason can’t help but smile. This is--not what he thought it would be, his teenage preconceptions based somewhere between what his father had been like after two drinks but not yet three and what he saw in movies and television. This--this lie, he’s got with Dick it’s… quiet. He feels quiet when he’s with her as Pete. He doesn’t feel as green.

On the other hand, what is he without his mission?

“I, uh.” He leads her over to the couch, carefully leaving space between them when they sit. “I gotta talk to you ‘bout something.”

“Never a good sign,” Dick says, and her eyes have gone dark and serious. 

“I’ve not been,” Jason says, suddenly stammering and not sure why. “I mean, it’s just--”

“Not me, right? It’s you?”

“It is,” Jason insists, when Dick stands abruptly, pacing in front of him. “It’s--this is my fault, really, Dickie, don’t--”

She turns abruptly, eyes narrowed. “This is about the age difference, isn’t it? I swear, if you’re doing this ‘for my own good’, I’m gonna--”

“What age difference?” 

Dick blinks. “Oh. It’s not the age difference?”

“I’m only three years older than you!” Dick’s forehead furrows, and Jason coughs, reaching for a believable lie. “The tabloids always had your age on the cover.”

“Look,” Dick says, kneeling in front of him, eyes earnest and her hand on his knee. “I know we haven’t known each other that long, really, and maybe we went too fast, and you just moved here, I get that. We don’t know each other that well. We can slow down, I just--” She drags a hand through her hair, her mouth twisted in unhappiness. “It’s been a long time since I met someone I feel like I can talk to.”

This is good, Jason thinks. In the long run, this is better. She’ll skulk around Bludhaven for a while, recuperating from the hit to her ego and maybe a slice of genuine hurt, be far less likely to pick up if Bruce calls. With any luck, his overt interest in Dick during his last interaction with Bruce will guarantee Bruce won’t call at all.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and tells himself the lump in his throat is good acting. 

Dick leans her forehead on his knee, her back bowed. “We can start over,” she offers quietly. “As slow as you want. Even just walking home on Tuesdays.”

Jason breathes. He wonders: could he? Keep up the lie? There’s a spark of a thought: what would life look like if he walked away from the promises he’s made and the blood he’s spilled and became Dick Grayson’s mundane boyfriend, with a shit job and a shit apartment but her body tucked against his at night and her smiling kisses?

It’s nothing more than a flash in the pan. Neither one of them have ever truly lived an ordinary happy life. He cradles her cheek in his palm. “I can’t.”

Dick sighs. When she raises her face her eyes are faintly red, but they’re clear and dry. “Okay,” she says softly. “Okay. I understand.”

Then she punches him in the face. His nose crunches under her knuckle.

Jason staggers backwards, blood gushing from his nose, his breathing coming out noisily. “What the fuck!”

“Sorry baby,” Dick says, standing with a deadly grace she doesn’t let bleed through when she’s not in the Nightwing suit. “Expecting me to cry instead?”

Jason blinks rapidly, letting his eyes tear up and spill over. “You honeypotted me?”

Dick smiles with all her teeth. “You better fucking believe it.” She pulls a mournful look, her lip trembling performatively. “It’s not me, it’s you.” She giggles, a high pitched mocking cackle that makes the hair rise on the back of Jason’s neck. “You really that good of an actor?”

Jason is mentally re-examining every interaction they’ve ever had. When did she find out? Did she always know? He reaches up to his own face and sets his nose with a crunch of cartilage and an unflinching expression. “Oh, I’m good.”

Dick’s right leg shifts backwards. Her body relaxes. 

Jason throws the coffee table at her. It’s made of cheap wood, light enough for him to heft but heavy enough to slow her down. Jason sprints for the hall closet, slapping a hand on the hidden switch behind the hanger rack. A hidden compartment springs open and he yanks his helmet out. The clasps hiss when they lock into place and everything is dark and muted for a single second before the HUD lights up. Little bit of finagling and he’s got air filters going and a garage opened right out front, the car already started. 

It’s all he has time for, because smoke is already filling the hallway. Dick’s got a breathing mask on and she’s moving in the thick of the cloud; unlucky for her the lenses in his helmet highlight her with perfect clarity. He dodges her elbow strike and sucker punches her, slamming her back into the wall. When he goes to punch her again she twists sideways, impossibly agile, and his fist cracks through the drywall. By the time he rips it free with a curse and a snarl, she’s hit him three times in the ribs.

They smash down the hallway, exchanging blows and parries, the only noise the solid thumps of their attacks and their heavy breathing. Jason picks her up by the belt and and the collar and throws her through the bedroom door, the thin wood splintering under the force of her body. 

She turns in the air, landing on her feet like a cat, and kicks a piece of wooden debris at his face. He slaps it out of the air, but the edge cuts into his wrist, dripping blood down his palm.

“Can I ask you a question,” Dick says conversationally, her breath hardly quickened. There’s a bruise in the shape of Jason’s knuckles starting to bloom up purple on her temple. 

Jason can taste blood on the back of his tongue, his broken nose aching and still bleeding, dripping behind his faceplate. His entire right leg is numb; his laugh gravels in his throat like shredded glass on the way out. “I think after all this you can ask me anything you want, killer.”

She flinches behind her breather. It’s quick and barely there but he catches her tells just the same way he did when she was thirteen and lying about sneaking out the window to watch an R-rated movie with Barbara. Why the hell did that trigger her? If she’d killed someone, surely he’d have found out about it by now.

Her smile doesn’t waver, though: it sharpens. “Have you ever wanted to go to Tahiti?”

Jason freezes. He has a second to think _well fuck_ and think longingly of that last green syringe, hidden in a lockbox under his bed. Then his helmet fritzes out, going black. A high pitched whine screeches straight through his ear canal into his brain, a hot poker of pain that makes him fall to his knees and cry out. He tries to cling to his anger, tries to focus on what he can feel but his hands are clenched on the floor, clawed up and locked into fists. Something strikes him across the back of the head and falls, thankful, into unconsciousness.

++

When Jason was--he thinks maybe twenty, but it was hard to tell, the days and nights bleeding together and those hollowed out black holes in his memory--Talia took him back to Gotham. The syringe hissed when she deployed it into his throat. 

It was just them, wrapped in stiff new clothes and hats and scarves, and it was snowing. Jason had forgotten what the snow smelled like. Talia took him to the Narrows, and his feet dragged as they drew closer and closer.

Talia had stopped on the corner, and told him that if he failed this test, they’d have to start all over from the beginning.

So Jason stepped into the alleyway where he died, and found it looked exactly the same. The same dumpster in the same place, the same oil stains on the crumbling brick walls. A man on the stoop sneered at them, jeering something nasty about Talia’s pretty mouth, and Talia drew her sword and cut his achilles tendon, sheathing the weapon in the same seamless motion. 

She dragged him, bleeding and wailing, and threw him down at Jason’s feet, prone in the same place Jason died, his fingers scrabbling on the ground. Talia kicked him in the throat and his screaming cut out abruptly, turning to desperate pleading gurgles.

Talia gave him a folder: the man’s rap sheet. How long he’s been selling, the accusations of and arrests for assault, battery. Pictures of the kids he’s hurt and the girlfriends he’s beaten, and any of it should have been enough but Jason looked at him, pathetic and cringing and the death rattle of his wheezing breath, his larynx crushed beyond repair, and it wasn’t for any of those reasons he took the knife Talia handed him, wasn’t because of anything in that folder he knelt and dragged it across the man’s throat and saw his own green green eyes reflected in the shining blade before the blood spilled out, hot and tacky and sprayed across his freckled cheek.

He was thinking about his mom, and all the men on corners and in alleyways whispering her name and flashing little baggies hidden in the crooks of their fingers. He was thinking that if Batman had killed every pusher on every street corner his mom would still be alive. He was thinking that if he could kill every criminal who deserves it, that’s a mission he could swear an oath to. 

++

Jason wakes up handcuffed to the chair. 

“--contained,” Dick’s voice is saying, out of his field of vision. He keeps his breathing even and his head lolling. Say what you will about however someone slipped a virus past his security, the helmet makes playing possum real easy. The sensitivity of his audio system doesn’t hurt either, Dick’s quiet murmuring from the other room coming in nice and clear. 

“I know,” Dick snaps, and Jason takes comfort that she sounds as annoyed as he feels. “It’s under control. Do _not_ call--hold on.”

Dick appears in the ruined doorway. “I’ll call you back, O. Don’t be a snitch.” She steps through into the room, nudging a piece of miscellaneous debris away with her toe. “You’re awake.”

Jason feels vaguely annoyed she could tell. As it so happens, being vaguely annoyed with her isn’t a new feeling. He lifts his head off his shoulder. “Couldn’t get the helmet off, huh? Did it zap you?”

“It was… shocking,” Dick says, and mock pouts when he refuses to respond. “Thought you liked my puns.”

“Liked them better before the bondage.” Jason rattles his wrists in the cuffs.

“Joke’s on you,” Dick drawls, lounging against the wall and cocking her head at him. “If you hadn’t pussied out, Petey and me would have gotten to the bondage eventually.”

Jason blinks. Unseen, his eyes go big and wide, because… she _doesn’t know_. He doesn’t know exactly what she’s worked out--and doesn’t that sting, that he can’t tell how long she’s been playing him like a fiddle--but there’s no way she’d be smirking at him like that and cracking sex jokes if she knew it was Jason under that new hair and green eyes and stammering stutter. Relief floods him. “Figured me out, huh?”

Dick’s eyes narrow, suspicious at his sudden relaxation. “Something like that. You really think you could drop that you knew my identity and Nightwing wouldn’t take an interest?”

“You always talk about yourself in the third person?”

Dick winks. “It doesn’t get you going, big boy? You’re just pissed I ruined your big reveal. Wanted to see me collapse in tears, huh? Wanted me to feel violated to make you feel like a man?”

Jason’s stomach rolls and he jerks in his cuffs. “No,” he snaps. He relaxes back into the chair, still scowling. “I’ve killed people, but I’ve never… I’ve never done that.”

“Newsflash,” Dick says, and her voice is arctic. “From what you knew, it’s exactly what you did.”

Jason’s jaw clenches. She doesn’t know the half of it. He stares past Dick’s shoulder at the wall. Behind him, his left hand has pried a metal staple out of the chair and has started on picking the cuffs. He grimaces. He needs to make a little noise, and then run like hell, and Dick’s too on edge not to notice.

Slowly, softly and then louder, he starts to whistle, the tune wavering at first and then solidifying. 

_He’d fly through the air with the greatest of ease_

Dick comes off the wall, every line of her body rigid. “How the fuck--”

Jason cuts out the whistling and starts humming instead, finding the melody again. Dick had taught it to him her first birthday at the manor, the song her parents sang her when they couldn’t afford birthday cake and they had cotton candy from the circus cart instead, the song her mother sang her when she tucked her into bed and kissed her forehead and called her their little Robin, bobbin’ bobbin’ bobbin’ along.

_That daring young man on the flying trapeze_

“Shut up,” Dick demands. “Stop that, stop it right now!”

Jason stops. “All that boasting,” he murmurs. “About playing me. And you missed the biggest reveal of all.”

“You--” Dick falters, swallowing hard. “You called me Dickie. You knew how old I was, the picture you took... you--you knew about _Haly’s_.”

“Always knew you’d turn out to be smart.” Jason’s very nearly free, his fingers slipping on his makeshift lockpick. “Shoulda known you’d keep bein’ a pain in my goddamn ass.”

Dick is ashen, wavering on her feet. “No.”

Jason goes for the kill. “Bruce’s known for weeks.”

Dick’s knees buckle. Jason wrenches free, throws the chair at her face, and jumps out the window.

She doesn’t follow him.

++

Jason backtracks from his Gotham headquarters. _O_ , Dick had said, which isn’t as helpful as Jason would like it to be. He’d swapped the helmet for a lowtech one, just in case, and tried a few different traces on the original email. No joy, whoever wrote the code does good work.

Jason takes to the streets. He should feel clean, he thinks, he should feel free. He’s severed ties with Bludhaven and can focus on Gotham. It’s Dick, he thinks uneasily, poking at the knot of emotions in his chest. He’s painted a target on his back and burned all chances of her staying out of Gotham to the ground. 

He’ll think of something. 

 

Batman finds him at nightfall, smoking in the Narrows. “No flowers?” Jason asks, flicking his fingers and watching the ash float away. “No teddy bears? I feel neglected, B.”

Batman is silent and unmoving, standing on the sidewalk just outside of the alley.

Jason sweeps his arms open. “What are you afraid of? The only person who’s died here is me.” He tilts his head. “Well. Not the _only_ person.”

“Do you remember the last thing you said to me?”

Jason shakes his head. “This isn’t about the past, Bruce. It’s never been about the past. It’s about the _future_.” His voice cracks on the last word, his passion sounding more desperate than despotic.

“Dick called.”

Jason drops his cigarette and stomps on it. “I don’t want to talk about Dick right now, Bruce, for fuck’s sake. Talk about me! See _me_.” He rips the red domino off, his face bare beneath it.

Bruce doesn’t reciprocate, his features hidden and flat under the cowl. 

“It’s too late,” Jason says, even though Bruce hasn’t said anything at all. “It’s too late to change it.”

“No.” Bruce steps into the alley, his cape swishing at his heels. 

Something Bruce never understood was how the Bat was different to the kids in the Narrows. He was what you prayed desperately for at night to save you from the street gangs when you walked home after school and who you cursed when he sent your old man away and your mom couldn’t make rent on her own. 

“It’s not too late,” Bruce says, and holds his hand out. “It’s never too late.”

Jason’s laugh hurts coming out, the yawning hole in his chest. “Maybe for Bristol. But for Gotham? For the Narrows?” _For me?_ “Burn it down and try again.”

He’s ready for Bruce’s arguments, his condemnations, his ultimatums. He’s vibrating with the anticipation of it.

“I made a joke,” Bruce says, and the wind goes out of Jason’s sails.

“What?”

“The last thing you said to me wasn’t anything at all. I made a joke, a bad joke, and you laughed.” Bruce swallows, his eyes dark against the mask, the moonlight against the bat emblem on his chest. “You know it took you six months to laugh when I took you in? It was Bluejay that did it: your first jump off a rooftop. And the last thing you said to me. Your laugh.”

Jason’s panting, harsh and unforgivably telling, the rapid rise and fall of his chest and the roaring in his ears. He shoves a hand in his pocket and curls his fingers around a detonator.

“Come home,” Bruce says, and his voice is--Jason’s never heard him plead before, not ever. His hand, still outstretched, trembles. “Jason, Jaylad--”

Jason howls. “You don’t get to do this,” he spits furiously, “you don’t get to do this to me again!” He rips the detonator out of his pocket, watching spitefully as Bruce’s eyes go wide with recognition. “I’m going to finish it,” Jason snarls. “And I’ll step over your dead body if I have to.” 

He presses the button. The resulting explosion is so large the ground jumps underneath them. Batman, mid-lunge, whirls with a snap of his cape and disappears into the night, towards the bloom of fire rising to the east. 

Jason grapples to roof to watch him go. Then he smashes his hood against an industrial chimney, over and over and over, until the metal cracks and cuts his hands, until it shatters into pieces he can’t grip. He flings the remnants into the night sky and realizes he’s been screaming, his throat raw and hoarse from it. 

He calls Talia, his breathing shaky and unsteady. She picks up on the first ring, saying nothing. “It’s starting,” he says, and starts to count his breathing. Count of seven, just the way she taught him. He doesn’t need that last syringe, he doesn’t need Dick or Bruce or anyone else. “Bruce knows.”

“Remember our deal,” Talia warns. 

He remembers the pits, the way the liquid felt thicker than water, colder than ice. How he sank deeper deeper deeper and fell into the sky down there, the stars that shredded his memories into pieces and didn’t give all of them back, the green green universe Talia gave him. It had taken a year and a half for him to remember his own name.

Jason watches the cloud of smoke billowing out from the riverbanks, the flames licking out towards the stars. He died once, on the dirty concrete just below him. It was slow and it hurt and he’d never felt so alone. It still hurts, late and night and just before it rains, a hole in his heart. An ache he can’t shake. 

“How,” he murmurs, twirling the detonator in his fingers, “could I ever forget?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was actually really upset with this chapter when I finished it (didn't go where I thought it was, didn't have the fun/flirty/angsty tone I wanted) and I spent a long time trying to edit it. I'm not sure if I made it better or exponentially worse, but I hope that I managed to at least make it entertaining. In particular I'm nervous about the jay/dick romantic interactions, I'm not sure if I laid enough foundation for it to make sense or if it felt really sudden.
> 
> Let me know what you think! I'm on tumblr @ sunspill for my main and @ nahekalei for my comic sideblog.

**Author's Note:**

> This is all horribly self-indulgent, but if we can't be horribly self-indulgent in fanfiction what are we even doing here.
> 
> I have a few chapters of this already written, and it's going to go in weird directions. I hope that you liked it enough to read more, but please be aware that the eventual pairing is Dick/Jason and that the ratings will change in future chapters. 
> 
> Let me know what you think and I'm on tumblr @ nahekalei


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